


The Date To End All Dates (Part Three)

by Xx_Self_Anointed_Trash_xX



Category: My Babysitter's A Vampire
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon Era, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:55:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 30,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24279202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xx_Self_Anointed_Trash_xX/pseuds/Xx_Self_Anointed_Trash_xX
Summary: It's circa December 2011, and Whitechapel's ragtag team of supernatural high-schoolers are left divided between the battlefield and a literal field, with Rory and Erica forced to flee the city against their wills. The mighty Lucifractor is now in the hands of nefarious Vice-Principal Stern; failure feels as inevitable as the next dreaded installment in the Dusk series.Picking up from the end of The Date To End All Dates (Part Two), a nostalgic fan attempts to console likeminded folks who long for a real ending to such an iconic series.Written in 3rd Person (Limited) to capture the feel of the show— changes POV.
Relationships: Erica Jones/Benny Weir, Sarah Fox/Ethan Morgan
Comments: 40
Kudos: 30





	1. Prologue: 'Previously on a Hilltop in Whitechapel...'

**Author's Note:**

> Within this fic, I try to keep canon in its entirety. This includes details such as: the time and location of the story; the ages of the characters; the established lore behind vampires, Seers, and magic; any mentions to past events; and even details such as the jokes/references/vocabulary the characters use. Needless to say, gaps in the aforementioned lore have been filled with a little creative licence. There are no named OCs in this story.
> 
> Simply put, this story is written to mimic a proper episode... If it were written by a fan (a diligent reader may be able to pick up several minor references to various episodes of the show).
> 
> Because it's not like I've rewatched it about ten times in quarantine... ... ...
> 
> Nonetheless, this is my first fic for this fandom! Feedback in the comments is more than welcome: positive (always a bonus), conversational (I'm not really a social media person, but sharing interests is always nice), critical (I don't use spellcheck, and it'd be interesting to get called out for unpopular plot choices / anachronisms / incorrect references). 
> 
> It's just really cool to see that there are other people here who loved watching it as much as I did. =D

_____________ERICA____________

Even in the remains of her trance-like state, Erica could sense an unneasiness about the night. Whitechapel, for all its demons and monsters, looked decidedly peaceful from her hilltop vantage point— deceptively so, her subconcious screamed— and the idea that she wasn’t supposed to be here, as an observer, but somewhere else (with _someone_ else…?) tapped away at her skull with the urgency of a hatchling at its egg. Waiting.

“For what?” She mused aloud, her wide eyes betraying supressed concerns. If she wanted to run away, then why were her only thoughts of her best friend: Sarah… And Benny, and Ethan, and the way that they actually made a pretty good team when it came to it. Not that she’d go around saying it, but dorks and misfits weren’t all that they were. And they’d proved that, in a crisis, they’d always be there for her; just as she had decided that she’d always be there for—

Erica’s train of thought lurched violently off its tracks as a glowing purple orb of death engulfed the town in one fell blast.

All she could do was stare.

Not an observer then, Erica thought to herself: a witness.

“For that.”

Nonetheless chipper as ever, Rory remarked only “Cool explosion!” of the incident. It honestly didn’t require a Holmesian leap in logic to deduce that the young vampire had yet to successfully process any of the night’s events thus far. When he did, however, the finality of Anastasia’s words resonated with both junior vampires watching eldritch energy dissipate across Whitechapel. Where else, but the ever-clueless Whitechapel, destined to dismiss a sorcerous act of genicide as a freak weather incident? It was hapless and helpless, but definitively _their_ Whitechapel: Team V and Team— a rare thought popped into Rory’s head, which he felt instantly, as ever, compelled to vocalise. “Ethan and Benny will be sad if they missed that.”

Erica was no longer the only one whose concience fought to resist Anastasia’s ancient vampiric allure; for a split second, worry was etched clear into the faces of both undying teens. It almost instantly muddled with the induced uncertainty, leaving only a phantom concern with the dull urgency of a microwave timer. Their remaining superior’s orders had been clear. Taking one last look around, Erica followed Anastasia and Rory into the night, blinded to her own apprehension.


	2. 1: Evasive Manœuvres

_____________ETHAN____________

Ethan was pretty sure that he and Sarah had a fundamental difference in opinion as to what a successful second date should look like. It wasn’t as if he was a perfectionist or anything, he’d have just expected there to be more flowers, less mortal danger, and a _lot_ less evil ex-boyfriends. He could regret his decision to invite Jesse later. Right now, he was busy dividing his brain’s proccessing power between ‘preocupied with Sarah’s implication that we’re dating now’ and ‘preocupied with trying to save the world again’. Both were equally pressing.

But so was dragging Benny out of Stern’s immidate proximity. Ethan made a mental assessment of their party’s state— a pair of vampires too drained to move beyond human speed, and a near catatonic wizard who was (as much as he disliked himself thinking it) rarely that effective at his best— and wondered, not for the first time, why it always fell to the Seer to come up with a plan. Was anyone else on this team even trying to think under pressure?

Judging by the deadweight on his shoulder, Ethan figured his friends might have given up entirely. Carrying the weight of the team… He could at least appriciate the irony. Even if he couldn’t bear the distant look. “We tried, Benny,” he offered, figuring his efforts had to count for something, “I mean we really, _really_ tried, but we’ve gotta…” _Run._ He let himself trail off, ashamed of how cowardly it felt to say out loud. Annoyed at how his best friend of a decade didn’t offer any words in return.

And now, he was apprehensive, as Benny grabbed his hand suddenly. It didn’t trigger a vision, but it did launch him into focus, allowing his brain to print out an important fact for him in block capitals: BENNY’S THINKING FACE IS THE SAME AS HIS ZONED-OUT FACE. He suddenly felt like a total idiot; there must’ve been something he’d missed before. Something he’d missed beyond the mannerisms he should have known better. Benny’s other hand was on Sarah’s back, stilling her and Jesse so that all four stood amongst the ashes in the empty coridoor. Even with each other so close, The Council building felt too large for its usual size.

“We’re not gonna make it, E. Not—“ Benny started, body-slamming Ethan’s delicate emotional state off a cliff. Where was the hope?

“We tried!” He blurted again, shutting down his friend’s attemps to finish. He had tried everything. A wave of desperation crashed into his sadness as a confession fought to escape his lips, _“I_ tried. I thought that if I got into his head that… And I’m so sorry, I just—“

The tears welling in his eyes stopped him from seeing Benny grow more and more agitated, but they sure as hell didn’t stop him hearing the exasperated yells of “ETHAN! E!” before they calmed to a reassuringly sarcastic, “Is this you pulling it together?” Then, to the group, “Are we all listening?” The answering silence confirmed the rhetorical. “Good, ok. Look, we can’t outrun Stern if he can target the whole city.” Ethan saw Sarah shift, possibly ready to protest on his behalf this time, but Benny cut her off by raising his index finger, as if conducting her to silence. He would never admit it to him, but Ethan thought that Bennny’s most magical ability was his inexplicable, inconsistant bursts of charisma. Having commanded his way through his dramatic pause, the group’s spellcaster continued, “But I have an idea.” The decisive tone caried gravitas that almost compelled Ethan forgive his friend’s theatrics. Almost: he still resented the vague responses.

Ethan noticed the briefly intrigued look Jesse gave his friend as he spoke, drawing his attention to himself for the first time in the exchange, and quickly straightening his features back to blassé. Not quickly enough. “Any second now, old Gaelon junior is going to wipe out every vampire in Whitechapel. How exactly do you plan to avoid it?” He may have have been dead already, and vanquished twice, but Ethan still considered his tone and mannerisms to be a little too cavalier for someone with seconds to survive.

Benny, on the other hand, visibly tightened his jaw as he locked his eyes with those of the vampire he’d made perfectly clear he still saw as the enemy. The fire in those green eyes had an unfamiliar menace to it. “I don’t.”

Before Ethan had a chance to properly analyse his friend’s words, he was being shepherded into a tight circle. “Everyone hold hands,” Benny ordered, dropping the his serious attitude with a smirk when they began to comply. “I’ve got something for show and tell.”

Ethan instantly reached for Sarah with his free hand, and struggled not to stare daggers into Jesse when he stepped between them. Sarah would never chose that creep. Not after everything he’d done. Surpressing his lingering hatred (he wouldn’t call it jealousy, not even to himself) Ethan moved his gaze upwards to look his old enemy in the eye. No doubt he’d be met with one of those smug looks designed to make him second guess himself. Either that, or he’d find the lecherous bloodsucker oggling the girl he was supposedly on a date with— her words.

He was, therfore, surprised to find Jesse’s self-satisfied smile directed straight forwards, towards his best friend, once again with that unsettling glint of curiosity. Maybe the old vampire had picked up on whatever Benny seemed to have noticed earlier.

Either way, Ethan found himself decidedly preoccupied in Sarah’s deep brown eyes. They stared into him with an unfamiliar intensity, which his head attributed to fear, but his heart gave to something else. It didn’t matter; she was looking to him for support. Knowing this was enough to bring a weak smile to his face as he held eye contact, widening the grin when his supportive look drew a similarly uncertain, but nonetheless present, look from Sarah.

The moment was theirs.

So much so, that the purple light beginning to flood the room could have been symbolic. He’d spent over a year standing his ground against monsters, thinking on his feet, thanklessly protecting Whitechapel… And now he was going into the light. Maybe this wasn’t death; maybe this was rebirth. This was him and Sarah, eyes meeting for the first time in the glowing strobe lights of a concert. This was his first conversation with the beautiful stranger in the tinted evening light. This was two incredibly skilled, yet incredibly different Starfleet officers, bonding in their efforts to stabilise their alarm-blaring ship. This was a hundred other lives they would be living.

Maybe he couldn’t save them all, but being here, at the end, holding onto his best friend, and smiling at the girl he loved— maybe that was enough. He felt as if he had to say something.

No sooner than this occured to him, however, Benny began to chant in what sounded like uncharacteristically polished Latin. He raised his hands as he did so, still clutching onto his friends at either side. Ethan wasn’t sure if Sarah felt it too, but it was as if Benny’s palms were on fire all of a sudden. One look instantly revealed why.

Benny’s extended hands were blazing with a brilliant light: powerful enough to be burning into Ethan’s eyes, but too facsinating to let him look away. He watched in awe as the light pulsed out from their circle, burning through the purple tendrils of Stern’s Lucifractor-absorbed magic before they neared the group. Benny’s hands were shaking. Bursting with new determination, Ethan only gripped onto him tighter. The heat was unbearable, but he knew he had to. They were a team.

When Benny finally lowered his eyes to meet Ethan’s, the initial strain of the spell was no longer evident. He instantly returned the spellmaster’s lopsided grin.

Only when the burst of purple light had dissipated, and Ethan’s hand was lowered again, did he break off his dumbfounded stare. They’d survived! Whilst all four of them let out audible exlamations of joy, the burning light gradually began to dull into a pale glow— just enough to illuminate Sarah’s smile— as Ethan surveyed the team. As much as he wanted to celebrate the four of them having made it though, he was accutely aware of the threat in the next room. He just didn’t want to be ‘that guy’ again. He couldn’t kill Benny’s moment yet.

Fortunately, Sarah only shared half of his concerns. “You guys…Benny!” she exclaimed, giving the boy a playful punch to the shoulder. Ethan couldn’t have feigned surprise when he mouthed “ow!” at him whilst rubbing the injury, so he rolled his eyes instead. Sarah conveyed the same emotion by maintaining her silence until the boys were finished. She sighed before she spoke. “Don’t suppose you’ve got another spell to get us out of here?” All eyes were on the spellmaster once again. He smirked at the others in turn, allowing a smugness to seep into the look he directed at Jesse.

“A man can try,” he stated, steadily begining to cast something, _“Circulus meum transportus—“_

“You might wanna hurry it up there, Merlin,” Jesse chided, gesturing ahead of himself. Ethan started when he saw Stern marching towards them, cape billowing behind him.

Benny appeared to have noticed too; his incantation aquired a sudden haste. Benny carefully snatched up a wrist each of the three others in his left hand. Stern began to aim a conjured energy bolt. _“—Per aether !”_ Ethan ducked down to avoid the oncoming impact, as he heard the final word of the spell echo inside his head.

When he finally unfurled from his defensive crouch, Ethan was amazed to find himself in a different place entirely. Even vampires weren’t that fast, and these two were injured. That meant—

“It worked!” Benny shouted gleefully, grabbing Sarah and then Ethan by the shoulders as if to force them to get a better look at his sucess-induced mania. He moved towards Jesse like he intended to do the same to him but appeared to think better of it, moving his hands in quick succession to offer a hug, then a handshake. He got a handshake.

“Gah! It actually worked!” He exclaimed to both Ethan and himself, gesticulating wildly. “I have been trying to master that _goddamn_ teleportation spell for as long as I can—“

“That’s mastered?” Sarah wasn’t fully impressed. “You mean that, out of all the places to hide and regroup, you wanted to go back to school?”

Benny turned to face her, dropping his animated eyebrows and crossing his arms over his chest. His sixteen-year-old sulking face was identical to his six-year old one. “Oh, everyone’s a critic,” he remarked, flicking his eyes towards a row of lockers. “That was practically my life’s work, Sarah!” Ethan snickered internally; a decade of friendship had given him front row seats to Benny’s drama hundreds of times before, but it never got any less ridiculous. Despite his ongoing ranting, he’d be over it in his next breath.

“Wait a minute,” Ethan started, an idea forming, “Benny— that’s it!”

Empty stares greeted him.

“Yeah, I’ve got this!” Benny furrowed his brow, “Wait… no.” He sighed, “You lost me, E.”

The effort, at least, was appreciated.

“Stern’s life’s work?” He asked rhetorically, preparing his explaination. “The way he went after the Lucifractor… Getting _us_ to retrieve it for him…” Clues jumped out at him from various memories as he fought to anaylse the data. “And then there’s the thing with his ansestor—“

“Gaelon Sinisteral,” Jesse cut in.

“— All I’m saying is: this was planned. All of it.”

“Ethan—“ Sarah tried. Wonderful as it was to be consoled by her, he couldn’t ignore the facts just to make things easier on him emotionally.

“It’s clearly personal for him, and it has been for some time, so why wait until now?” He then answered, plainly, without breaking his rhythm. “For whatever reason, he needed us.”

“Maybe he needed you to find it,” Sarah offered, taking a step towards him.

Benny’s eyes lit up at this. “He wouldn’t have known we could!” he counterpoised eagrely, also taking to Ethan’s side as he lauched into an explanation. “When Stern caught me in his office, he had me completely neuralyzed.” He gave a cursory glance to Sarah and Jesse. “Memory wiped— like in _Men in Black…”_ Ethan never needed these things explaining to him. “Anyway,” he coughed, “Because he knew he was going to make me forget, he said all sorts of things. Well, most of it was just that I’m stupid, but—“

“The point, Benny,” Ethan reminded him, prompting the boy to click his fingers in recognition.

“Right, so, Stern made me confess everything, and although he wasn’t surprised by the vampires, and that I’m a totally awesome spellcaster— probably on account of my raw arcane aura—“ Sarah snorted, and Benny shot her an evil look before continuing. “He _was_ surprised to find out Ethan was a Seer!”

“Wait,” Sarah asked, “Stern wasn’t onto us this whole time?”

A sudden wave of clarity washed over Ethan. “He wasn’t onto me,” he stated. “No offence Sarah, but you, Erica and Rory… aren’t exactly subtle.” She didn’t dispute the claim; Ethan’s confidence in his theory grew. “Stern even told me himself—” and he’d gone and overlooked it like some kind of fool. “He said he’d ‘never have guessed’ about me being a Seer— I thought it had to be a bluff or something… given how he played us to get to the Lucifractor, but…” Ethan forced himself to present the rest of his hypothesis. “Guys, I don’t know if this sounds crazy…”

“No crazier than you two normally are,” Jesse interjected. Ethan couldn’t tell if he was being paranoid, but his not-jealousy concerns were quickly upgrading to fear-of-betrayal concerns. He might as well throw his theory out into the open.

“I think whatever Stern was waiting for had something to do with Benny.”

The object of his statement let out a high-pitched, nasally laugh, though he soon found himself to be the only one laughing. The realisation ended his ammusement. “Like what?” Ethan didn’t have a good answer. “Stern’s already packing, like, _ten times_ my magic power, and it’s not exactly like he loves us Whitechapel students enough to be in the market for an apprentice. Dude’s probably just trying to psych us out or something,” Benny stipulated, before sagely adding, “He’s exactly the type.”

Perhaps he was overthinking it, and Stern didn’t have a deeper connection to any of them. He just wasn’t going to take the chance. “Maybe you’re right,” he reasoned, “but we should still search his office again: we can look for _his_ things this time. Anything we find out about him— or the Lucifractor— could help us.”

Sarah folded her arms over her chest. “But what if that’s what he wants. It could be booby trapped or something!” She sounded exasperated. “And Benny,” she continued, gesturing to the spellcaster, “You said you were mind-wiped… How were you able to remember anything Stern said to you?”

Ethan kicked himself for not asking the same question although, at the same time, he praised Sarah’s sharp intellect. Being smart was more than memorising the cellular composition of a houseplant or something like that, and it wasn’t often she got the recognition she deserved. The question, however, still remained. He turned to Benny.

“Not to worry, my fanged friend— I simply brewed a potion of ‘seeing into one’s own past’. The conversation I described is, one-hundered percent, a genuine experience of yours truly.”

“You managed to make a potion that worked against Stern’s magic?”

Ethan had a bigger question. _“When_ did you manage to do this?”

Benny rolled his eyes. “Back when you were freaking out about dead people on my sofa!” He clarified, gesticulating wildly with his arms. “You were just moping there—“ He gave the exasperated wizard a pointed look. He was _under a fear spell._ Benny’s raised eyebrows felt unsypathetic to his situation. “Fine. You were bewitched,” he conceded, “but the point here,” he raised his index finger, “is that, with you and Grandma out of action, I could either mope around doing nothing, _or—_ I could try and figure out what the hell was in that awesome sandwich.”

Ethan didn’t know what to say. Thank God for that sandwich, perhaps, although he decided it was probably better to say nothing at all. The same went for Sarah and Jesse. Benny, however, must’ve mistaken their stunned silence as an indication that his explanation was inadiquate, as he quickly added “and it’s kind of a super easy potion for me to make, cause the Seer is my best friend and— although we totally fixed the whole him-being-a-werewolf-thing that happened that one time— he still sheds like a—“

“Okay, Benny.” He let his eyes finish the _you can shut up now._

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Jesse asked the group, dispelling the awkardness, “Vice Principal Stern’s office won’t search itself.”


	3. 2: That Which Rings True

_____________ETHAN___________

Keen not to waste any more time, Ethan tried to lay his hards on everything in the room at once. Something had to trigger a vision, and besides: that left three to do the detective work. He gave the others a quick glance. That left two doing detective work, he ammended to himself, as Benny instantly dove back into the cabinet containing some of their confiscated items. Both Jesse and Sarah, at least, appeared on-task.

It really was quite an unassuming office. Beyond the wire-mesh safety-glass door was just cheap wooden furniture, a cheap old desk computer, and a cheap desk chair pushed up against garish yellow walls littered with posters advertising everything from the mundane to the outright dull: ‘boy’s basketball tryouts’, ‘celebrating diversity’, ‘Junior museum trip— see office for details’… No ‘Stern’s secret weakness’ in sight. He could hear Sarah groan in frustration as useless lever-arch binders began to stack up on the ground. Jesse, whilst refraining from throwing around Whitechapel High documents, appeared to be having similar luck. So much for detective work.

“Is this _really_ the time for infinite root beer, Benny?” he asked, chiding the teenager in the way they were both accustomed to. Typically, the faint grumble of protest he received in response did nothing to deter him from taking the flask as he walked over to the cabinet. It was definitely worth a search. Dismissing the remaining box of confiscated items, Ethan sifted through the cupboard’s remaining unsearched contents. Would the stack of papers trigger a vision? The tray of whiteboard markers? The hanging suit jacket?

An idea hit him.

Moving with a sudden, uncharacteristic pace, Ethan swiped the jacket off its hanger and threw it over the chair. Benny gave a short but sincere laugh. “I like your thinking— to understand Vice Principal Stern, we must first _become_ Vice Principal Stern!” He wasn’t about to dignify that with a response. Instead, he continued with his original task— searching the jacket pockets. “You’ve gotta put your arms in the sleeves,” Benny offered unhelpfully as Ethan’s hands came away with nothing. He was ninety percent confident that he was doing this on purpose now. Nevertheless, he continued to ignore him, fishing his hand into the lining of the jacket. His last chance.

Gotcha.

He wasn’t aware he’d said it aloud until he noticed the three figures crowding around him. Sarah leaned towards him, over the jacket. “Got what?”

“There’s something in the inner pocket— I think I might be able to get a vision from it,” he revealed, as he held up the garment to give her a better view. She didn’t waste any time reaching into the pocket and pulling out the item. Holding it between her thumb and forefinger, she lifted it into the light, allowing the four of them to see.

“I’m thinking you’re probably right.”

And with that, Sarah held the item closer towards Ethan for a different kind of inspection. He wasn’t sure of what he’d find; he wasn’t sure of what he wanted to find. Taking a deep breath out, he looked up at Sarah, whose warm eyes waited expectantly on him. He could just spot Benny giving him a thumbs up in his peripheral. “Here goes,” he told them, and himself, before he extended his index finger to make contact with the simple, gold-banded wedding ring.

Ethan’s eyes widened and his lungs expanded as the scenery around him suddenly blurred into a a familiar blurry light, tinted by a purple haze. Instantly, he knew: this wasn’t a vision. _Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no, oh…_

“Now what are you meddling children doing in _my_ office?”

Before he could wrap his head around the situation, he was face to face with Stern, who looked no more angry than he was during their last interaction, though that said very little. He was, after all, trying to kill them; he’d come close, too. Still, Ethan forced himself to look him in the eyes, suppressing his fear and willing lasers to burn past the sorcerer’s thick frames. It was unfair that being the Seer didn’t give him any combative powers. His only weapon was, once again, his wit.

He levelled his tone. “Us _children_ are figuring out how to defeat you. And we’re not alone.” Benny’s grandma was right about fear— it was weak compared to what Sarah and Benny gave him. Confidence swelled in him as he focused on the love and hope he shared with them. “Jesse was able to take out your old Grandpa, and I’m pretty sure he’s keen to do it again. All that’s left is to find out how.”

“Ha!” Stern taunted, annoyingly unfazed by what Ethan considered to be some of his best ‘fighting talk’. “You won’t find anything.”

It was his confidence and anger working in tandem, Ethan knew, that drove his next actions. Taking an impactful stride towards the other man, he began his counter. “Well, if that’s case, then why are you interfering with this vision?” He folded his arms in the way Sarah often did. “You’re still afraid.”

This, as he’d expected, tore through a bundle of nerves. It looked as if the evil old wizard was having a stroke. “You… you meddling _miscreants_ couldn’t possibly begin to comprehend what I’ve been through! How long I’ve waited…” Ethan watched as a dark purple glow overtook the eyes boring into him, their menace matching that of the dread Vice Principal’s voice. He was sure the man was struggling to contain his anger. In a reassuring reversal of his typical conversations, it was Stern who had to break eye contact and take a deep breath.

The reassurance lasted all of two seconds.

When Stern turned back to face him, the dark magic was gone from his face, and his emotions controlled. “You underestimated me,” the sorcerer stated, “and now you’ve lost.”

“Yeah?” Ethan took another steady step towards the aggressor. “Well, I think you’re the one underestimating _us!”_ And, with that, he grabbed the man’s arm— too fast for him to react. Ethan immidiately felt Stern’s grip on the vision concede to him, and his eyes went wide once again as his power finally reached beyond Stern’s surface consciousness.

Allowing the vision to flood his mind, Ethan first saw the ring from Stern’s jacket, shadowed by the likeness of his vice prinicpal. There was no backing out now. He watched as the ring began to spin in the ether (Ethan wasn’t sure if the dark, shapless backdrop to his visions had atmosphere) as if being flipped, but focused almost solely on the ghostly figure of Stern as it slowly faded. When the ring dropped with a clatter, there was another figure in his place.

Ethan would have gasped if he could.

Instead, he travelled further into his vision, where the ring was morphing into the shape on the back of Stern’s cape: a diamond inside a circle, surrounded by two off-kilter arcs. Only, in the vision, the image was made up of sixteen glowing dots. Ethan observed the fluid motion of the dots, like that of a stange square dance, as they crosed over each other, growing and merging as they did so. Sixteen, eight, four, two, one… Lightning burst from the remaining glowing dot. Then, he heard the growl of thunder and the cry of an infant.

Just as quickly as he’d been snapped out of it, Ethan lurched back into reality. His ears echoed with phantom sounds, and his brain was running a mile a minute, replaying the images on repeat. It couldn’t be true. It just…

Sarah was still next to him, giving him some much needed support, but Benny, too, decided to lean in now, sporting his typically goofy look of anticipation. He wasn’t sure what to say. His decade-long best friend, on the other hand, instantly began waving a hand in front of his face, causing him to blink. “Alright! Earth to Ethan, do we copy?” he asked, exuding the same brand of ‘nerdy-go-lucky’ that he had always had.

It wasn’t true. It just couldn’t be.

“E?”

But what other explaination was there? Against his better judgement, his eyes flicked across the boy’s familiar features, taking mental notes. The odds of inheriting those green eyes…

Benny raised his shoulders along with an eyebrow, indirectly informing Ethan that he’d been looking for too long. He instinctively turned to Sarah for support, more abrubtly than intended, and she gave him a weak smile. The way that she worried at her lip betrayed her concern; the effort empowered him nonetheless.

“Benny,” there was no sugar-coating this. “How much do you know about your grandma?”

The question appeared to take him aback, and he gestured between the Seer and the ring worldlessly. Of course it would sound off-topic. Maintaining the wordless exchange, he shrugged, dismissing the question in favour of an answer.

“Uh… the usual ammount…?” Benny eventually offered, raising his voice at the end to make it a question. “I know she’s magic, Whitechapel’s senior citizen prom queen, got a killer left hook…” The sorcerer leaned into each phrase, swaying as he rattled off facts whilst eyeing Ethan for his response. “… The look of disappointment in her eyes…” As his sentence trailed off, so too did Benny’s focus.

Ethan coughed to drag his friend— partway through reliving some punishment or another, no doubt— back into the conversation. Although Jesse’s face betrayed nothing more than his usual background amusement, Sarah was clearly stifling a laugh, and Ethan himself felt weighed down with the responsibility of knowledge. Yes, he was preparing them for the news, but he’d ultimately still have to say it. “In the vision…” he started, already wishing he’d stayed silent or, better still, ignorant. He closed his eyes and inhaled for an accelerated count of four. “I think your grandma knew Stern.”

“What? Like… In high school?”

Benny wasn’t the only one to look confused; Sarah’s eyes wordlessy echoed the same question. And why woudn’t they? It would have to be a shock, unless… Ethan’s mind flashed back to the calculating look he’d seen Jesse give Benny earlier. Eager to verify his sudden hypothesis, he checked the corner of the toom, where Jesse was nonchalantly running a finger across the spines of some (possibly literally) ancient Physics textbooks. Listening but unsurprised: so, he’d been correct. This was what he’d missed.

His best friend and (hopefully) girlfriend were still waiting on his answer. Oh God, how could he just tell them? How could he explain the full truth, when he’d already given the hint?A wedding ring, binding their evil Vice Principal to Benny’s grandma? How could he look Benny in the eye and tell him that the only rational interpretation for what he saw was that this cult of sixteen sorcerers had passed down their powers and, by the looks of it, their weird, evil tradition through generations, whose bloodlines all seemed to converge right next to him? He couldn’t. “… Something like that.”

For the first time, Ethan made a direct effort to gauge Jesse’s response to his statement. His _lie._ They both knew that was what it was, and hearing him say it to the others in the room seemed to take the vampire by surprise. However, before Ethan could look away and deny ever having looked, the vampire caught him checking. Ethan had never feared being blackmailed before in his life, but sharing such a knowing look from that ‘reforming’ monster made him understand the mix of shame and terror. Fortunately, the vampire said nothing of it.

“I think we need to ask your grandma some questions, and fast. Stern knows we’re here.”

Sarah’s face fell as Benny’s widened into a grin. “Alright, ladies and vampires,” he winked, offeringhis hands out for another teleportation spell. Honestly, the guy pulled off a couple spells and thought he was Merlin all of a sudden? Ethan snatched up a hand reluctantly. _‘Ladies and vampires’:_ hillarious.

“Wait!” Sarah sighed in frustration, scrunching up her now downturned face in some kind of internal struggle. “Guys, I have to go find Erica. That phone call— she just didn’t sound herself.” She turned her attention to Ethan specifically. “She and Rory could be in real trouble.” It was like she was asking him for permission, as if he’d ever deny it. He wondered whether she knew how much it meant to him that she saw him as a leader in times like this.

Before he could respond however, Jesse kicked back off the wall and joined the group. “There never is a sense of cutting losses with you guys, is there?” Ethan watched Sarah morph her features into disscontempt. “Now, Sarah—“

“Now what?” She demanded, not waiting for a response. “When are you _ever_ going to understand that I care about my friends.” Jesse scoffed. _“All_ of my friends,” she continued, “and just because you never cared about anyone doesn’t mean—“

“Hey, hey, Sarah _, easy.”_ Ethan steeled his jaw. Jesse wasn’t making this ‘easy’ for anyone. Sarah flashed her fangs. _“Easy._ I was just going to say that Anastasia’s probably evacuating them to the Archive.” He turned to Ethan with a patronising look, but maybe that was just his face. “It’s like a vampire-run library, on the outskirts of town.”

“And you think Rory and Erica will be there?” Ethan had to be sure. Moreover, he had to be a strong leader under Jesse’s scrutiny. He was suddenly acutely aware that he was still holding Benny’s hand, and fumbled until his arms fell to his side— strong and independent. Benny, on the other hand, stood aimlessly, his face exaggeratedly confused and uncomfortable. Well, exaggreatedly for anyone less expressive, that was. It was closer to how Ethan felt.

“Positive.” Jesse replied, “Vampires look after their own.”

Although it was addressed to him, Ethan knew the words were meant for all three of them. What a jerk. Nonetheless, he knew that the old vampire meant it sincerely. Jesse’s actions against them in the past confirmed his valuation of vampiric (un)life and, as much as Ethan hated to admit it, of Sarah. It still didn’t mean she’d ever go back to him.

In fact, he was clearly lower in her estimations than Ethan had thought. “Remind me again why you’re helping us?” She asked.

Jesse smiled with all the warmth of a shark. “Because I care about our people; I’ve never denied it.” He took a step towards Sarah, who, Ethan was pleased to note, instantly recoiled. “Our tradition, our prophecy… Our territory.” The vampire appeared to consider something briefly. “You can go run after your pitiful flock if you want to, Sarah,” he condescended, turning back to Ethan and Benny. “I’ll make sure your boyfriend and his little witch friend here don’t get our entire race killed.” Ethan had to smile a little at that— the giddy joy of being called the ‘boyfriend’, and the comedic value of Benny’s pout at being called what he had, in the past, referred to as an ‘anti-mage slur’. It was with some reluctance that the guy allowed Jesse to snatch up his open palm. Ethan stared at his friend’s other hand, before turning back to Sarah.

“I’ll be fine,” she assured him, answering his unspoken question. “I’m going to bring them back.”

That said, Ethan nodded his goodbye. He hoped that she knew it was also his good luck, see you soon, and I love you. Watching her leave the office at an inhuman speed, he finally felt able to take his friend’s palm. Through the blurred background noise of the incantation, he could’ve sworn he could still hear the faint sounds of her moving into the distance.


	4. 3: The Master of Unlocking

_____________BENNY____________

As Ethan and Jesse rematerialised beside him on his front doorstep, Benny was sure that, under any other circumstances, he would’ve been pulling out a killer victory dance. That was three advanced spells he’d pulled off today flawlessly, people. Three! If that wasn’t worthy of at least a ‘good job, Benny’, then he’d swear nothing was. Nothing ever seemed to be. He gave an imaginary eye-roll to all his unappreciative muggle associates.

Then again, maybe they suspected something.

It was far from him to be the anxious, doom-and-gloom type— mainly because it required him to take things seriously— and equally unlikely that he should look a gift spell in the mouth, but Benny had to admit to himself that his recent arcane prowess had come seemingly out of nowhere. He’d have resented it if anyone said it to him (again), but his spells _did_ have a tradition of not always having precisely the intended affect. Except for today, of course, and he really didn’t want to overthink it, but he could feel something slightly different in his magic, and it all just unsettled him. Actually, it worried him. He wouldn’t have said he was _scared,_ but…

Well, he wouldn’t say it: Scarefinder rule number eight.

After all, he’d already fought vampires, zombies, aligators, evil spirits, evil tree spirits, curses, demons, other spellcasters, aligators… Had he already counted those? The fact remained; he was feeling uneasy. There was no nice way of thinking about it, but ever since he’d woken from the trance Stern had put him in— when Ethan’s quick thinking with his email stopped him from doing who knows what— he’d been able to feel something dark.

That was quite the red flag by itself, but what made him really uncomfortable was being able to place it— knowing that he’d felt something like it before. In fact, the only person to ever make him really acknowledge it had been himself. Sort of. Although he could admit, albeit in retrospect, that ‘Evil Benny’ was hillarious at times— specifically in his vehement defence of the pleather jacket— there were things he’d said that haunted him. Not so much the words— he’d never been very good with those— but with the themes he introduced: the _’magic he’d never had the stomach to use.’_ Benny had never told anyone about the contents of that conversation, but he’d since pored them over again and again in his mind, wondering what would’ve happened that day if his evil twin didn’t share his reckless insistance on melee combat.

Because Benny knew he was bluffing when he said his counterpart would be no better at magic than he was. _Christ,_ he’d come a long way since then but, still, he’d had a relatively good idea of one of his main problems with the craft for a while and, contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t pronunciation. He’d successfully turned a goldfish inside out once, on his first try, and never again, because it gave him that same dark feeling.

Grandma had been evasive about it. He’d expected that, but a guy had to ask, right? _‘The Earth is good,’_ she’d told him again; _’You’re fighting on the right side,’_ as if that was enough to just forget about it. He knew what he felt, and he chose to constrain himself to the kind of simple, light-hearted magic which wouldn’t make him feel it again.

Except now the feeling wouldn’t go away. One way or another, Stern’s brainwashing spell had left him with an immidiate sense of his own ‘not sunny smiley-face’ magic, and he’d spent the last God-knows-how-long repressing the fear that either Ethan, or a member of their vampiric company, would sense it— whatever ‘it’ was.

The thing about magic was that the more he learnt about how it worked, the less he was sure he wanted to. He’d aquired a considerable ammount of knowledge in the last year— especially during the half where Ethan was too hung up over Sarah being missing, and a fully-fledged vampire, to hang out with him— and had managed to wrangle a list of moderately concerning facts from his grandma, has grimoire, and google: AKA the dream team.

Fact number one: not just anyone can do magic, it has to be passed down to you. He hadn’t been too concerned about the fact until Jane brought Debbie Dazzle to life— at which point, he’d had to ask his grandma just how many magic people there were. The bad news was that sixteen bloodlines, five generations ago, left time for a lot of potential Sterns and Stephanies for him and Ethan to take down. The good news was that a sorcerer’s maximum magical potential is determined by the concentration of their bloodline so, chances are, an evil witch would struggleto actually turn him into a frog.

Fact number two: there was no spell to unwrite the _Dusk_ novels. Why not?

And, most concerningly, fact number three: all magical energy was dark. He wasn’t sure when exactly the conversation had come up but, one way or another, he’d ended up confessing to his grandma about his concerns with using black magic. It sort of all just came out in a giant dump of emotions at the dinner table one evening and, whilst she’d been reluctant to offer up helpful advice at first, sure— she eventually let him in on one of the secrets she hid behind those wrinkles. It was how you used it that counted, but magic itself as a craft was innately evil.

She hadn’t said it in quite those words (it was definitely the sort of thing which felt better to discuss in a roundabout kinda way) but the meaning was still obvious. He wasn’t exactly one for riddles.

Either way, the fact remained: the dark aura he was perceiving somehow emanated from a wellspring of magical potential energy inside him. It sounded like a good, technical name for it. He wondered if, in another life, he and Ethan could be coining the term as the world’s first supernatural physicists. Maybe they could make loads of cash finding a spell to generate clean energy, or a time machine, or…

His elaborate fantasy shrivelled up into his cold reality; maybe they’d cause the apocalypse.

Now _that_ felt about his speed. The thought allowed reality to lurch back in, and suddenly he was back in the moment, fumbling with the keys to his front door. He was just being paranoid— and really ineffective with this lock. Ethan coughed into his fist, a classic code, but hey! He was trying to hurry this up, dude, it was just that the _damn_ key wouldn’t….

_Oh._

He’d been a little too preoccupied in his internal monologue to remember casting a locking charm on the building— nothing a quick incantation couldn’t fix. _“Right,”_ he muttered aloud, playing the ordeal off as the kind of klutziness people expected of him with a nervous laugh, whilst he focused his arcane energy on the door.

It was a simple charm; the dark energy shouldn’t have been pulsing like this, taunting him with its existence. At least no one else seemed to notice. Although, having thought that, he also had to reflect on a few of the recent looks he’d gotten from both Ethan and Jesse, as if they _knew._ Maybe it was just paranormal paranoia, but it was hard to dismiss as such when his most restless 3AM panic email contingency had turned out to be necessary. Just thinking about what could’ve happened back in the Council chamber made him shudder.

“After you,” he invited, allowing both members of his company inside before him. There was no point in checking if the spell had worked first. Not anymore. He absentmindedly tapped on the door until he heard Jesse’s voice from inside the house. “Looks like you boys have got a little problem.”

This was another thing that Benny had been dreading. In front of him, sprawled across the sofa, was his grandma, still mentally trapped in Stern’s bewitched letter. Although the logical part of his brain— the bit that sounded like Ethan— assured him that this was to be expected as they’d probably been gone no longer than an hour, the part of his conscience that he actually listened towas crying out in anguish. No one was allowed to hurt his grandma. By attacking both her and Ethan, Stern had essentially decared war on his entire family. Benny had never wanted to tear a human soul from its mortal body as much as he did in that moment, staring into his grandmother’s unseeing eyes with his best friend’s reassuring hand on his shoulder. Ethan had misread the tears in his eyes as grief.

It was anger.

Benny wasn’t often angry. He’d accept that he was easily frustrated but, then again, he’d challenge anyone to spend the ammount of time he had with Rory and not develop a short fuse. The thing was, he was always able to see the humour in things; It was hard to do that with a metaphorical cloud looming over him. “Benny…” Ethan started, trailing off before he could find any words of reassurance. He didn’t mind. The guy was definitely trying. Besides, it wasn’t Ethan’s job— Mr Future-Vision Honour-Roll was the idea guy— he was the charming rogue with the hillarious, yet poignant, commentary that saw them through. Because Ethan could die jealous; he totally was Han Solo.

“That’s it,” he declared, taking on his role in the group, “Stern can try and conquer this town all he wants to, but I draw the line at forcing power naps onto old ladies.” He turned to Ethan. “Go do what you gotta do, E.”

He knew Ethan well enough to know that the guy’s uncertain eye flicks across the room weren’t really a request for persmission, but reassurance. Benny was more than happy to give it. He was pretty sure that the guy ran eighty percent of his plans by him only as a courtesy, and the remainder of those plans were RPG strategies (where he was pleased to note he often had the edge). He gave Ethan a nod, and watched as his friend sat down and touched his fingertips to his Grandma’s wrist, before his eyes went wide, signalling that he was now blind to the outer world.

For all intents and purposes, it left Benny alone in the room. Any conversation was strictly between him and the jerkface who bit his best friend, and his best friend’s girlfriend— because Sarah and Ethan were totally a couple now. Still the best $100 he’d ever spent, though probably not a good conversation topic for Sarah’s ex-boyfriend. He gave Jesse an awkward smile to acknowledge the silence, which was met with typically cool neutrality. _Well._

Benny decided to turn his attention back to the Seer on his sofa, who still seemed to be deep in the mind of his Grandmother. Ethan better hurry up in there.


	5. 4: Benny's Grandma the Vampire Slayer

_____________ETHAN___________

It was exactly the same as before inside Evelyn Weir’s mind, and Ethan instantly hated himself a little. He was here to grill a tired old lady for information. Even that was reductive, he thought— this was his _best friend’s grandmother._ She was practically part of his own immidiate family at this point! Not to mention the ammount of times that she’d been there to help them clean up their mess…

Maybe she did it out of guilt.

He instantly winced at the thought. Ethan Morgan was a realist, not a cynic, damnit! He was too young to be a cynic. Then again, he’d never have expected to have grown up so fast in high school. That tended to happen when you were missing key facts like ‘your town is an epicentre for supernatural activity.’

“Ethan!” Benny’s grandma smiled at him, “I didn’t expect you to defeat that wicked Vice Principal of yours so quickly.”

He really didn’t want to have to correct her. Especially not now— she looked as if she’d regained some colour, but he could tell that she was still drained. So, taking the coward’s way out, like a mature, resposible young adult unswayed by the societal obsession with male bravado, he decided not to hide his shifty eyes and nevous laugh, letting her discering mind deduce what is was she needed to know.

“You did defeat him, didn’t you?”

She knew he hadn’t, and Benny was right. Asking him with that knowing look was cruel, and humiliating, and please-don’t-make-me-say-it, and—

“Ethan?”

He had to say it, “Not quite.” She raised an eyebrow, hands on her hips. “— but that’s actually why I’m here. We need your help.” Her face fell.

“I’m sorry Ethan, but until I can escape this loop—“

“We need your help with information,” he cut in, “and fast.” Well, here goes nothing: deep breaths, Ethan. “Um…” His tongue swallowed his words. “Stern…?”

The question was incomplete, but Evelyn attempted to answer anyway. “I appreciate what you’re doing here, but that man uses very powerful dark magic, dear. It’s no use trying to find a way around the fight when—“

“I actually came to ask if you— well,” he laughed nervously, words flooding out of his mouth to overcome the pressure of his hesitance, “this might sound really strange, but—” he had to ask. “Were you married?” Even the sound of her breathing stopped. He couldn’t go back now. “… to Stern,” he clarified, as if ambiguity was the reason behind her silence.

She let out the deep sigh of surrender: the kind Ethan could tell mixed relief with defeat. “I think we both know that the man you know as Mr Stern has been keeping a few things hidden up his sleeve.” Here it was. Oh God, Ethan was wrong once in a blue moon, and he had _so_ wanted to be wrong this time. He looked at the unfathomably distant familiar woman with pity aimed at the both of them, until she continued.

“Now, you kids probably won’t understand given all that’s happened since, but when I met my husband,” the memory of a smile crept onto her features, “ he was unlike any other man I’d met. He and I shared something… well, _magical.”_ Her laugh was sad. “The two of us met— like you and Sarah, actually— in high school, when some vampire, “ she paused, thinking of the word, _“thugs_ had started getting a little bit cocky in the downtown area— bodies and that piling up— and I— well, I was _younger_ then— felt a sort of responsibility as an Earth Priestess to protect the innocent.” Evelyn moved her hand as if to bat the story away as insignifficant, but Ethan was bewildered. Did Benny have any idea? He decided to put his questions on hold until she was finshed

“He was there that night,” she continued, looking up into the distance to picture the memory. As she did so, the scene that she was describing began to materialise around them, like projected images on a cinema screen. This was certainly new. Then again, Ethan reasoned, he was inside her mind.

There, on the not-screen, stood a young, hot (yes, it was okay to say it) reflection of Benny’s grandma, poised in the shadows of an old alleyway in some since-refurbished corner of Whitechapel: stake in hand, and counting the footsteps of the three leather-clad, biker-looking vampires that had yet to be aware of her presence. The image was actually reminiscent of Sarah or Erica— she had to have been at least a junior, and she was rocking the vampire girls’ signature brand of feminine badass, tastefully dressed in a blouse and mini-skirt, with her hair styled. He could really tell she was a cheerleader.

If the look hadn’t given it away, however, her next actions did. Ethan watched in stunned silence as the woman in the memory whispered some inaudible words, then swung out of the shadows at a ninety-degree angle with a straight-legged high kick that connected directly with the jaw of a six foot vamp— sending him flying into a wall with enough force to push back. Leaning into the recoil however, she transfered her momentum into a cartwheel past the now-charging remaining vamps, ending in a backwards strike that drove the stake in her hand through the heart of one of them.

The other was quick to recover, but Evelyn once again followed her line of movement and swung her stake-hand past what was now ashes to carry her through into a full turn that she accentuated with another high kick. There was a loud thud as thug number two smacked against a dumpster. Although, by this point, the initial target had recovered.

Pushing down the dumpster lid with both hands, Evelyn evaded his frenzied charge by completing her somersault on the high ground. Ethan’s stomach was doing somersaults too, as he tried in vain to process what was happening. Both vampires were now hissing up at the woman who would be Benny’s grandma, and the absudity of the thought really struck him. This was so weird.

From her elevated position on the dumpster, Evelyn sent one of the vamps flying against the other side of the alley before jumping down to connect a fist with the other one’s jaw. _Holy—_ the vampire’s head tilted back for a split second, giving Evelyn a window in which to wedge her arm under his neck and move to grapple him from behind. Ethan was forced to assume that her incantation had been one to grant her inhuman strength, because the soulless creature of night failed to break her headlock. She turned the two of them around to face the groggy-looking vampire on the floor, stake poised at the heart of her hostage.

“Call off the attacks,” the woman in the memory ordered, in what Benny would have referred to as his grandma’s business, as in ‘she means business’ voice. It appered to have a different effect on his friend however, as vampire on the floor merely hissed, and the one in the headlock laughed. “We all know feeding doesn’t take this many kills.”

Her hands shook as the struggling vampire on the floor rose, slowly stalking towards her. “And what,” the thug snarled, “is a little witch girl going to do about it all alone?”

At that very moment, thug two broke the headlock, reversing the grapple as Evelyn struggled. Fangs drawn and a forcful grip on her chin, the vampire began to slowly close the distance between her neck and his teeth. His voice was thick with undead hunger as he whispered to her flesh, “I’m going to drain you dry.”

Only, in the next moment, he was a pile of ash, and a wooden stake clattered to the ground. Ethanwould’ve tried to get a good look at the newcomer, but his efforts were rendered obsolete when a familiar orb of purple energy came hurtling towards the remaining vampire. He could recall being targeted with a magic blast looking like that twice in his life— most recently by Benny, and before that…

Young ‘Stern’, with his wide green eyes and messy brown hair, bore more resemblance to his friend that he appreciated. In fact, as he watched the spellcaster rush to help the startled young Evelyn, he noticed an eerie parallel between them beyond the physical. This familiar stranger was smiling geekily up at the woman he’d saved, exclaiming both his surprise and fortune that not only he’d been in the right place at the right time, but that his spell had actually worked. Ethan was completely floored with déja vu. He needed to focus on the differences— this man’s mouth was smaller, his nose more pointed.

Back on her feet, Evelyn smiled and gave the boy her thanks. Without missing a beat, she then walked forward to the charred, unconcious vampire, crouched down, and staked him for good.

That done, she turned to face her rescuer once again. “What’s your name, whizz kid?”

“Ben.” Ethan froze. “But you can call me the luckiest guy in Whitchappel?”

Ethan forced himself to listen to the rest of the conversation through his near catatonic shock. Evelyn folded her arms over her chest in playful challenge, “And why’s that?”

Ethan knew what sort of thing was coming next from the coy way the boy lowered, then raised his gaze to meet hers. “Because I met you.” And there was the cheesy chat-up line: Benny Weir by name and nature, it seemed. This was the only thought that Ethan kept with him as the memory faded into blackness, and he was once again face-to-face with an old woman. How could she not have told them? His nails were digging vivid crescent moons into his palms under the effort of controlling, or at least categorising, his emotions: fear, pity, anger, betrayal… He couldn’t be sure.

“We fell in love,” she told him. Ethan had no idea what to say. His mind was buzzing with questions, but every thread of thought seemed to have knotted into another, leaving him with a spare cable draw of sentence fragments.

“Benny…” He started meekly.

“You have to understand, Ethan. My grandson— your best friend— was named after his grandfather as a way for his father and I to acknowledge one of the bravest, most headstrong men I’ve ever met.” She paused, allowing him to interrupt, but he still couldn’t find the words. Checking his face for some sort of reaction, she carried on, “It was also a way for us to hounour the dead.”

At this point, Ethan was really confused. It must’ve shown on his face too, as Benny’s grandma launched into her long-buried account of the full truth.

“Now, Ethan, I don’t know how much my Benny’s told you about this family but, to his knowledge, it’s always just been me and his dad.”

He nodded at this, trying to recall details, “He said that his mom had died before he’d known her back when we were kids.”

“Yes,” Evelyn responded gravely, wistfully distancing her gaze, “Hannah’s passing was a real tragedy.” She returned her attention to Ethan, “especially given how she was murdered.”

Murdered? Ethan was taken aback. Benny had never mentioned anything of the sort, if he’d even known about it. At this point, Ethan really wasn’t sure. Either way, the news was a shock. _Murdered?_

“By some evil group of Whitechapel’s bloodsuckers— gone, now,” she answered, drawing Ethan’s attention to the fact that he’d asked his question aloud.

“But why would they—“

“The same reason why I had to raise my son to believe his father was already dead. An obsession with some ancient prophecy.”

Prophecy? Not again. In his limited experience with prophecies, all they did was spell out bad news— the kind of bad news where two-hundred and nineteen souls, and then quite possibly the entire world, were on the line. It was time for another nervous laugh, “What kind of prophecy?”

Fresh regret seeped into Evelyn’s features. “My husband would never say. He could be so stubborn sometimes, but—“ she looked like she was gathering strength to say whatever it was she had to say next, and Ethan’s heart really went out to her for all she’d endured. “But it wasn’t until after our son was born that he tried to drag me into his madness. If I’d had known, I would’ve left a long time ago, you see.” She took a deep breath. “He looked right into the eyes of that child, and he said,” she reported, tears forming in her eyes, “that he was just a stepping stone to reclaiming Whitechapel for the Order.”

Ethan could understand her pain.

“His own son: a ‘stepping stone’!” she cried out, clutching her side in angush. He instinctively dove forwards to help her.

“Hey, don’t worry. We’re not gonna let him win this,” he assured her.

She offered him a weak smile, “We’ve been talking for too long. What matters now is that you go after him.”

Ethan frowned at that, “We’re just still not sure how to beat him.” He was, however, completely sure that he wanted to.

“All that man cares about is his stupid prophecy; if you can stop that, then you’ve won. Now, I may not have all the details, but I know it has something to do with the magical bloodlines—“

“The sixteen sorcerers of the original Order?” She smiled her confirmation. So far, so good. “And Benny’s somehow the key.”

Evelyn looked entirely scandalised. “Who told you boys that? What loose-lipped, tattle-taling—“

“I worked it out from a vision,” he confessed with a slight shrug, _“kinda_ had a hunch.”

Suddenly, Evelyn’s demeanour became more frantic, and she rushed forwards to grab Ethan’s wrists. “You mustn’t tell him.” Ethan had barely opened his mouth to protest when she flicked some sparks from her finger, effectively closing it again. She pleaded to him with words and eyes, “You think I made some kind of random decision to keep magic out of his life as long as I did?” He couldn’t respond, but he supposed he would’ve said yes. The old woman sighed as if she knew. “His poor pa was so distraught with what happened to his mamma that he asked me to brew him a particularly potent Draught of Forgetting for him to use to entirely blot out the supernatural.” She let out an exasperated sigh, “So here I had an estranged husband who would do anything to execute the prophecy, and a son with his life destroyed by those who would do anything to prevent it. I couldn’t raise my grandson it that world.”

Ethan was stunned. In fact, he was fairly sure that he’d already surpassed the atmosphere of ‘stunned’, and was boldly going where no man had gone before, to the uncharted systems beyond. He opened and closed his mouth like a goldfish. It was all he could do.

“I don’t blame you if you hate me,” she continued, dispelling her enchantment, “As long as you don’t blame me for anything other than trying to keep my boy safe from the dangers that would try and find him.”

“Looks like we managed to find danger all by ourselves,” he stated, trying to lift the mood. He’d taken in enough to know that Benny’s grandma loved him enough to try her best, and wasn’t about to let her dwell on the buried trauma any longer.

To his elation, the corners of her mouth lifted. “The two of you were both born on your own path; I should’ve known that trouble would somehow find its way.” Her tone became serious again, “So I’m begging you, Ethan— promise me you won’t breathe a word of this to my grandson.”

“I—“

“Ethan!” For all its urgency, her tone was still somehow soft, “this is the only thing that I can still protect him from. If he finds out about the prophecy, we have no idea what choices he’ll make—what kinds of dangers he could present to himself or others.”

By this point, Ethan was pretty sure that he’d frowned wrinkles into his forehead. His impulsive best friend was… well, _impulsive,_ but he wouldn’t hurt people if he knew about the risks. Benny was both a class clown and a total softie, and whilst he had an awed appreciation of the way his grandmother had protected him, he wasn’t sure if he could keep up the lies. “I think Benny deserves a chance to choose for himself,” he confessed, gasping out the rest of his argument. “You’ve been shouldering this burden for so long, and you’ve allowed him to grow up to be funny and smart, independent— and really, _really_ passionate about everything.” He slowed his speech to a pace where he could better consider his words, “Nothing that he finds out now is ever gonna take any of that away.”

It was about halfway through his speech that he realised he wasn’t just speaking to Benny’s grandma; Ethan was speaking from the heart. Fundamentally, Benny was no different for Ethan’s knowledge. Heritage didn’t determine the darkly humourous unflappable attitude, the dorky mix of being incredibly sarcastic yet interpreting everything literally, and the admirable dedication he had for things that others might’ve dismissed.

When the magical old woman smiled at him with a twinkle in her eye, he couldn’t help but assume that somehow she knew what he was thinking. “You’ve come such a long way,” she informed him, “I trust you’ll do what’s right.”

The second she ended her sentence, Ethan found himself, once again, on the outside, observing her paralysed form on the sofa. He had a decision to make.


	6. 5: If It's Any (Council)ation...

_____________SARAH___________

Towering gothic architecture with ornate but darkened windows could only mean one thing; Sarah had found the right place. Honestly, it must have been by some undead miracle that vampires hadn’t been discovered in Whitechapel by now. Subtle much?

She rolled her eyes as she passed below the textbook image of a gargoyle hanging from the vaulted entryway. _Surely,_ this was overkill. Then again, she guessed there was a reason for Jesse’s cover as the ‘Drama Club.’

It was insane to think how much her life had changed since then.

She could almost look back and laugh at her precocious younger self, who thought she had her life all figured out— before she got betrayed by her crummy ex-boyfriend. Most girls were left with a broken heart and, at worst, minor property damage. At the time, she’d thought her life was over. I mean, come on— her life _was_ literally over!

She never considered that she could make a new life.

And, actually, even with the all the weirdness— Ethan and Benny and their constant geekitude, all the new challenges and (as it turned out) bureaucracy that came with being a vampire, the constant struggle to protect a town that seemed blind, dumb and deaf to its own supernatural danger— even then, she had to admit that maybe this new life was even better. She was a fully fledged vampire with a best friend _forever,_ and she still managed to keep up with school, and movie nights, and parties, and dates, and—

There was so much she had Ethan to thank for. He and Benny had accepted her into their inner circle without a second thought, and she couldn’t begin to imagine what her life would be like right now without that.

Although it started as another little window into the mortal world, back when she was a fledgeling caught alone in between two worlds, she could see it had become so much more. The dynamic was glaringly different by the time she’d come back as a full-vamp senior— her and Erica were both spending more time with the boys for one thing. Even with her being flung into her own pocket dimension, she couldn’t remember a time in the past year that she’d ever really felt alone. Both the guys seemed to have grown up a little, both physically and emotionally speaking, and for the first time she really acknowedged that, as a group, they had all been outsiders: supernaturals on the edge of humanity, and humans on the edge of the supernatural. Despite being ageless, Sarah felt like she’d grown a little too.

It didn’t matter if they didn’t fit in either world; they’d found each other in the middle.

Sarah snapped her thoughts back to the task at hand as she entered the building, crossing the final threshold. Private property or not, vampires didn’t need permission to enter their own territory. At least, not from whatever supernatural force kept them out of homes uninvited— an unfamiliar vamp stepped from the shadows of the door’s ornate wooden archway, flashing his fangs at her. Judging by his dark, outdated look, she guessed him to be some kind of vampiric enforcer. She flashed her fangs back.

“Another Whitechapel refugee,” he concluded, replacing the menace in his features with concern. The Archive guard stepped aside to allow her entry and, as he did so, stooped into a servile bow. How very… _council._ Already sick of the antiquated formality, Sarah reminded herself that the visit was only going to be a quick in-out job to find Erica and Rory, as she left the candlelit entryway.

Walking into the Archive was like going into one of Ethan and Benny’s fantasy video games. A maze of towering mahogany bookcases, all filled with gilded ancient tomes, stood before her, lit only by a series of dark chandeliers casting flickering candlelight from the giant, vaulted ceiling. No doubt about it: those nerds would’ve totally geeked out.

Fortunately, Sarah couldn’t care less for the melodrama and hundred-years-old knowledge (or whatever it was)— her mind was focused on her mission.

“Your brothers and sisters grieve for our bretheren lost to the Lucifractor,” the guard behind her stated, following her into the strange labyrinth. His words filled her with a sudden anger. ‘Our bretheren?’ She and her friends had been railroaded, time and time again, for every disruption— every attack, every suspected treason, every _disgusting_ grave robbery— in the coven, and they were _still_ beating the ‘this is your family’ drum? These bureaucrats didn’t deserve her intervention, and they sure as _hell_ didn’t deserve Ethan and Benny fixing up their messes. They’d successfully cleared any lingering doubts; Erica and Rory would be better off away from here.

She pivoted at vampic speed and hissed at the guard, “I don’t know what it is with all you tiny bat-brains, but I am never, _ever,_ going to think of The Council as a family.” Despite what they seemed to think, it wasn’t her who’d burned that bridge. “I’m just here for my friends.”

“The blonde girl and her little brother?”

Sarah failed to hide her surprise at the senior vamp’s cooperation. And her confusion at what he’d said. “Rory’s not…” she started, quickly realising that her correction was irrelevant. “Yeah, that’s them.” If she was reading the other vampire’s expression correctly, he was incredibly relieved. This had to be a trap. “And I’m taking them with me,” she asserted.

“You must be Sarah,” the vampire guard sighed. There was no point in denying it. “Thank God— I can’t get the little guy to shut up.”

Well, that was less of a surprise. Trying to convey her urgency without her anger, Sarah pleaded with the guard, “You have to help me get them out of here,” and then, seeing his hesitance, added, “I’m _begging_ you. All of our lives are at stake— _literally.”_

Pausing for a second, the vampire leaned in towards Sarah. There was clearly a signifficance to his next words. “In the hundered years I have served as the guardian of this archive, I have yet to see a threat to our species as severe as the Lucifractor.” He sighed, before lowering his voice, “The Whitechapel Vampire Council doesn’t trust you, Sarah, but you might be the best bet they have. Jesse—“ she sneered at the name. “— told me of how you and the mortals foiled his prophecy on the night of the lunar eclipse.” She couldn’t give an accurate guess as to the emotion in his voice. “We need somone like that more than ever.”

The Archive Guardian suddenly looked more alert, and Sarah was barely able to follow his gaze before he suddenly dragged her to a shadowy dead end of the bookcase maze. So, they were being watched. “I can’t do much without being staked for treason,” he contined bluntly, still in a whisper, “but I can tell you it won’t be easy.” His face looked grim. “Anastasia is not going to want to let them go.”

“Little Princess can try and fight for ‘her flock’ all she wants,” Sarah challenged, unsheathing her fangs, “No one gets between me and my friends.


	7. 6: Truth Be Told

_____________BENNY___________

Sometimes, Benny wondered if Ethan knew about the weird thing his eyes did when he had a vision. No one else ever seemed to notice. Come to think of it, he actually had quite a few questions about Ethan’s power: did the time that passed feel longer to him inside the vision? If he wanted to, could he end them early? Could he touch the disk of a video game and get a vision of how to master it? Was that how he kept boosting his TrueScore on _Halo?_ That traitor!

It was then that the ‘traitor’ reopened his eyes, back in the land of the living. Pressing as his accusations were, they’d have to wait; it was do-or-die time. “Alright, give it to me straight, E,” he commanded, jumping up onto the sofa next to him. Grandma couldn’t beat him for it if she was still trapped in the loop. “Where’ve we gotta aim for a critical hit?”

He was aware that maybe it came across as a little too upbeat— hey, he was dealing with this in his own way— but hadn’t quite noticed just how shaken Ethan looked. Checking his friend’s emotional state was an afterthought, and he kicked himself for it mentally. _God,_ what did Grandma say to him? “Ethan? Still with us, buddy?”

When his friend gave a startled jump at the question, he untucked his knees to sit down, leaning in to stretch an arm past his unconcious grandmother and onto his friend’s knee. Maybe Stern had no weaknesses— that’d be a pretty daunting thing to find out. Or maybe he’d killed someone, probably whoever the ring belonged to. Maybe Grandma had fought him and lost. He tried to search for some sort of hint in Ethan’s unfocused brown eyes.

“I think your friend’s having a hard time figuring out what to say,” Jesse piped up. As if he’d asked. Having spoken, the vampire ceased his intrusive studying of everything from the paintings to the various trinkets in the house, and began to take calculated strides towards the centre of the room. Benny wasn’t sure if it was done to annoy him, but Jesse kept his eyes fixed solely on Ethan, avoiding the glare he’d spent almost a year perfecting. “It can’t be easy knowing who to trust.”

Ethan looked up at that, making and quickly breaking eye-contact with Jesse to find the corcerned face of his friend. So, Ethan could respond to the dude who tried to kill him twice, but not his best friend, who’d _just_ saved his life. Again. He could appreciate, however, that they had bigger things to worry about. In fact, Ethan was still staring through him— he hoped not literally (and turned to check behind him, just in case)— such that Benny involuntarily let a little more of his concern seep into his features. It wasn’t unlike Ethan to take time to gather his thoughts, but it was unlike him to look so uncertain. So… afraid? Oh, God— it was the fear spell, it was the—

“Whatever Stern’s plan is, it’s got something to do with a prophecy,” Ethan revealed, instantly drawing Benny’s attention. Dude’s voice was insanely level for a guy whose face had TRAUMA stamped on it in caps: definitely a promising sign. The level voice, that was— though if he’d been more observant, he’d have noticed the clinical uneasiness with which his friend said the name ‘Stern’. His mind was, as per usual, preoccupied with a million questions and (what Ethan would probably call bad) ideas. Mix in some distress, marinade with concern, bake for ten minutes at four-twenty Fahrenheit, and you’d have distraction pizza. When all of this was over, he was getting pizza. Peanut butter cup pizza.

Benny once again reminded himself to focus on the situation at hand. After all, Ethan was still talking and, also significantly, staring. Did he have something on his face? “Your grandma said it consumed him.”

Ethan paused, and Benny took the opportunity to swirl his thumb across Ethan’s knee. He was still there. He wasn’t going anywhere. It was gonna be ok. “So, we’ve got a grumpy old man obsessed with some musty poetry,” he joked, trying to lighten the mood. A lopsided smile crept onto his face as he let out a snort of laughter to preempt his own joke, “Well, with that and the ring, I’m thinking someone’s bitter and D-I-V-O-R-C-E-D, which means we should probably hit him with—“

He hadn’t really been paying attention to anyone else as he spoke, but he stopped in his tracks when he saw how wide Ethan’s eyes had gone. “Whaaaaat’s with the face?” He asked, returning both hands to his sides.

“I—“

“Well, aren’t you going to tell him?” Jesse looked between a shrinking Ethan and an ever-more-confused Benny with mock surprise. Or maybe it was really comically affronted surprise— what it certainly came across as was obnoxious. And irrefutably in control. He didn’t care anymore; he’d had enough. He’d spent what was at most an hour getting paranoid about some stupid black magic aura and it being noticed, and he was already sick of it. It was like the time he’d hidden his zombie bite, only much, much worse. At least he knew where he was with zombies. This, in stark contrast, was the agony of not knowing, and he was sick of it. Whatever horrible news had been discovered about their current adversary couldn’t _possibly_ begin to rival his own private concerns, so if the Nerd King and Jakeward Glitter-Face had something to say— they better say it.

The trick, was getting them to say it with the sort of dramatic, protagonist-tier dialogue that he could look back on and re-cast with characters from _Warlock’s Phantasm—_ himself as the brooding, arcane hero, receiving the dire news. “Tell me what?” He asked, standing up from the sofa. “We can’t fight together if we don’t trust each other.” He punctuated it with a smoulder directed at the wall, and all the hot babes in the ‘reliving the moment’ scenario.

You could call it crazy if it didn’t work. Seeing his empassioned argument, Ethan also rose to his feet, opening the conversation into a sort-of semi-circle. “Your grandma made me promise—“

“To keep secrets from me!?”

“To do what was best!” Ethan’s voice matched his urgency, but not his volume, and he might’ve been embarrased by the contrasting maturity of their attitudes were it not for the fact that he felt so damn _betrayed._ They were a team. Ethan tried to continue, “The prophecy—“

“To hell with the prophecy, Ethan!” They told each other everything. He’d told Ethan the name of every girl he’d ever crushed on, the cheat codes to every game he’d ever played, the password to his computer…

Just not the darkness.

Not directly, and not now. He was suddenly gripped with fear: fear that maybe he was the one who was acting strange. Maybe Ethan knew he was the one to start keeping secrets, and Benny cursed himself, because _of course._ Of course he couldn’t keep anything from Ethan, who didn’t need to be a Seer to know exactly what he was thinking at any given time. Ethan, who’d found out that his babysitter was a vampire and gone, in his stride to rescue her— who judged everyone by their intent and their actions, and would always try and do the right thing— his best friend. How could he?

And he hadn’t noticed anything that was going on around him, but his rising emotions were starting to churn that darkness to the surface and, yes— he could _feel_ it, but it was only a feeling, and he hated himself even more for being so paranoid about it, because it was _stupid,_ and he was letting the fear win, and Ethan had fought off a fear curse, and he was losing to regular fear, and if Ethan told him whatever it was his grandma had said then he’d screw up all their plans, like he always screwed up plans, because he was certainly no Han Solo, and he wasn’t even a good wizard half the time, and—

And everything in the room was tinted in purple light, floating about two feet off the ground— completely frozen in place.


	8. 7: Mana-splaining

_____________ETHAN___________

In the moment, Ethan’s most immediate concern had been for the safety of his friend. Even for someone who always spoke with his hands, Benny argued wildly when he was genuinely mad— to the extent where Ethan thought an outsider could incorrectly perceive him as violent. The guy would only hurt himself.

The thing was, from the moment they’d met, he’d known how quick Benny was to flare up. It was the nuances of the boy’s unusual temper that he’d learned only with years of experience: that dude was only ever half as angry as he actually looked, wasn’t actually throwing his hands around to threaten or fight you, and the more he blamed himself for the discourse, the more he’d shut you out. Ethan had been calling his name, over and over, only to have it fall on deaf ears. Benny may not have been the best listener, but shutting him out so completely during an argument…

It was a significant concern.

The next, nonetheless pressing concern was that he couldn’t move. He didn’t mean that in the metaphorical, dazzled-by-the-moment sense; he literally was, like everything else in the room, suspended in a field of Lucifractor-purple light. Paralysed in a tractor beam of black magic. All he could do was stare at the chaos surrounding him— aimlessly, unblinking— and relive the rush of the moments leading up to his current state: Jesse warning him to get out, pulling him towards the door. He’d resisted, trying to help his friend— talking to him and, when that failed, reaching a hand out to trigger a vision or just capture his attention— except he didn’t get the chance.

What the _hell_ was going on? It felt disingenuous to ask himself, yet the need to find an alternate solution remained. Benny was really good at… _lots of things,_ but black magic? After the whole mess with Della’s dog, the budding sorcerer had been sticking to the more Disney Channel-friendly range of his powers. Ethan had no complaints about that.

To be honest, being paralysed and suspended in the air put most of the things he moaned at Benny for into perspective.

He really wanted to blink.

Instead, he was stuck pulling a concerned face at a point on the wall. Benny remained in his peripharal vision, still very much on the ground, and still, somehow, not noticing a thing going on around him. Contrary to Ethan’s expectations, it looked as if his friend hadn’t done anything deliberate to trigger the current state of events, and was intead busy pushing his palms into his eyes with tension that was visible in his skinny arms. Whatever the dude was experiencing, it had to come with some _serious_ headache. He hadn’t wanted to admit it to himself before, but regardless of all the secrets and lies, Benny suddenly getting spells right on the first try— after being mind-controlled by an evil, more powerful wizard— was suspicious. Now, with all this, he had to wonder if maybe…

Falling back to the ground lurched him away from the thought and into an inelegant stumble, made all the more humiliating by Jesse’s perfect descent. Oh, come _on—_ even the vase had landed successfully. “Benny,” he started, the comedy moment having robbed his tone of anything other than frightful awe. All his questions had been shaken off balance. “What…?”

There was no way of knowing where to start.

“I am _so_ sorry, I— I dont— this isn’t— I’m not—“ and Benny looked scared, and Ethan was looking at him, scared, and it struck him for the first time that maybe he wasn’t the only one who was holding pieces of the puzzle. All the threads met in the middle.

The path was clear.

“Your grandma told me that she knew I’d do what was right,” he stated, taking a physical step of confidence up from his landing position. “I wasn’t sure what that was at first but— believe me— I didn’t want to lie to you.” Another step forward: a leap of faith. “You deserve the truth.”

First, however, he waited for Benny to meet his eyes— it had to be told face-to-face. It didn’t take long with Ethan staring, so intently; he barely registered Jesse’s distant intrigue as he continued, “That prophecy is life or death to vampires. Well… _unlife,_ but the point is: the Order that Stern’s ancestors were a part of?” Benny shyly nodded his recognition, “The prophecy’s meant to be fulfilled by one of their decedents.”  
  
“So we were set up to lose this one.” Benny gave a defeated chuckle.

Ethan gave a glance towards Jesse, who— for the first time— showed the signs of moderate aprehension. He supposed the guy was human once. “Not quite,” he stated, only then returning his attention to his now-confused best friend. “It’s more specific than that.”

Struggling to find a way through the maze around a simple truth, Benny’s mouth opened and closed like a goldfish. It was then that Jesse spoke up.

“Gaelon Sinisteral’s legacy was to be completed by a fifth generation sorcerer, to correspond with the power of the five-pointed star.” Ethan wondered just how much Jesse knew. “So, not _Stern,”_ the vampire finally divulged, taking a long, slow stride towards the sorcerer in the room with them, “His grandson.”

A weight was lifted from Ethan’s shoulders.

Benny, on the other hand, seemed to still be processing, moving his fingers about in the air to gesture between himself and his unconcious grandma, and furrowing his brows at the result of his internal equation. “That’s…” he completed the phrase with a humbling nod, which looked, to Ethan’s surprise, somewhere between acceptance and expectation; there wasn’t even a hint of denial. He wondered whether Evelyn would’ve considered it an anticlimax.

Then again, he knew it was his reponsibilty to convey her fears. “Your grandma thought that the best way to keep you and your dad safe from all of it was to keep you in the dark,” he explained, yet to touch on fears of his own. “Now that he’s found you _and_ the Lucifractor—“ No need to finish that one. “Do you think there’s a chance you could still somehow be partly under his control?”

To his relief, Benny shook his head, “Nada— the spell in that video is basically a failsafe knockout, temporary paralysis _and_ full system restore on my brain. If it worked at all, it’d have to break any enchantments on me.”

Jesse appeared to take an interest in this, his ears pricking up at the mention of breaking enchantments. “It looks like that’s not the only spell you broke.” To Ethan’s amazement, Benny didn’t dismiss the comment— the guy didn’t even register confusion. Was the Seer really the only one in the dark now? Fortunately, the vampire was quick to clarify, “I could never sense it before, but now…” he sniffed at the air, then gave a sigh of satisfaction. It didn’t fill Ethan with confidence.

“Vampires can smell bloodlines,” Jesse continued, “And, up until now, your wizard friend over here didn’t have a scent— which means _someone_ ,” Ethan noticed the way that the vampire’s eyes drifted to the unconscious woman on the sofa, “Was hiding it.” Benny visibly gulped; it looked like he had something to say.

First, however, the wizard cleared his throat. When the words finally left his mouth, they were smaller than usual— his hands less animated, “What just happened, that—“ Benny inhaled a sharp breath, “that _arcane pulse_ wasn’t just some random spell gone wrong.” He shifted his eyesconfidentially between Ethan and Jesse, apparently deciding how much information could be divulged in present company. “It’s this whole _thing_ that comes with magic.”

There was no time for Ethan to ask questions (he wasn’t sure exactly what to be asking about anyway) before Benny began to elaborate: “Alright, all this stuff— spells, potions, the Lucifractor, Grandma’s old camera—“

“Evil camera,” Ethan interjected.

Benny pointed at him in acknowledgement— Ethan had to admit that he also thought he had a point, “Right! It basically creates a version of you that’s better at channeling dark powers, like—“

“Like reducing energy waste!“ he reasoned, and Benny nodded. “Whereas the Lucifractor increases the input energy levels.” Simple physics. Although Ethan enjoyed having made the connection, the implications it left raised a series of questions; he could investigate later. Giving both Benny and Jesse uncertain looks, he verbalised his dicovery, “The two of you use the same type of supernatural energy.”

Jesse rolled a side-eye at Benny, “If that’s what you call using it.”

Hey! Ethan was aware that his model was unrefined, but the principles of it were all that mattered for now. This could be important! He just hoped that he didn’t look as crimson as his cheeks felt at the jab— although, when it came to taking offence, he didn’t feel half as scandalised as Benny looked. Actually, he was slightly caught up in the irony of it— the ancient vampire who’d spent years draining the lifeblood of mortals to sustain himself could, in an unusual twist of fate, himself be drained of his (un)life-sustaining energy.

“Grandma says it’s our responsibility to use magic stuff for good, but that’s just to make balance,” Benny confessed, “It’s like what Sarah says about vampire urges— some spells feel like they’re calling you into something… _evil.”_

“You’ve been experimenting with dark magic?” That was stupid— even for Benny.

The wizard rolled his eyes at him, “No,” and when Ethan raised an unconvinced eyebrow, added, “E, I don’t want anything to do with it, trust me— sometimes I feel it pop up—“ he wiggled a finger by his stomach; the feeling must have been gutteral, “— and I push it back down.” He sighed in the way that Ethan had seen him do so when reliving a funny memory, “Although, that usually causes the spell to just fizzle out.”

Well, Benny’s wildly inconsistent arcane exploits suddly made a lot more sense; Ethan justified his friend’s issues were much the same as fledgeling Sarah’s. He wasn’t, however the only one to have rationalised something.

“That’s Sinisteral magic alright,” Jesse announced grimly. “And whatever charm was keeping me from sensing it before must have been supressing it altogether.”

“How—“

Jesse silenced his question, “A sorcerer’s magic is tied directly to his bloodstream— drain as many as I have, and you figure it out.” He watched Benny grimace at the image, keeping his own expression neutral. Jesse _did_ say he’d done worse— it wasn’t as if their introduction left him in disbelief of the fact. Two-hundred and nineteen souls…

Their first soirée with the undead.

Not for the first time, Ethan wondered what their lives would be like now if somebody else was around to take care of Whitechapel’s monsters. The events of the day thus far all leaned towards the theory of the ‘wrong question’; their lives were too defined by the paranormal to be separated from it, so his leading idle positing was, in fact, futile. He had to wonder sometimes if it really was they who were drawn to the unexplained, and not the other way around.

It didn’t matter; they were wasting time. “Speaking of draining sorcerers,” Ethan began, ignoring a scandalised look from Benny. It wasn’t as if he meant _him._ “I think I know what we have to do to get Stern.” As he said it, Ethan wondered how long it would be until it felt appropriate to mention that their current adversary’s real name was actually that of the boy next to him. It’d definitely be a long time after all this blew over. If all of this blew over.

At least he had a plan.

Evidently, he was making that much obvious, as Benny clicked his fingers at him excitedly, recalling Ethan’s earlier contributions, “Right, the prophecy!”

He nodded— the prophecy indeed— though the act, of course, invited Benny to nod back with something between excitement and mania. Looked like the boys were back in business. Satisfied as such, Ethan turned his attention to Jesse, “If we want to get him out of Whitechapel, we need to find out what’s in that prophecy.”

Despite being framed as a statement, his question was obvious. They all knew who would have the answers— Jesse gave him a critical look at first, but eventually responded with, “It’s kept under lock and key, but _The End of Nights_ is infamous across the coverns.” The vampire turned to Ethan, “I would have had it in my collection, before I was forced to leave town.”

Well, that was an accusation if ever he’d heard one. How convenient it was for the guy who attempted to steal a legion of fangirl’s souls to gloss over that and focus instead on the fact that foiling his evil scheme interfered with the cataloguing of an (ironically) unforeseeably useful prophetic library. He wasn’t the only one thinking it.

“It’s what you deserved,” Benny muttered. Jesse didn’t look too amused.

In an effort to diffuse the tension, Ethan placed his hands between the other two, addressing his friend first, through gritted teeth, “—Which isn’t what we’re discussing right now, B.” The boy huffed in reluctant acceptance. “Where can we find it: _The End of Nights?”_

“Same place that all vampire artefacts get evacuated to,” Jesse smirked, “The archive.”

Ethan and Benny turned to each other at the same time, smiling, pointing, and speaking in unison: “Sarah!”


	9. 8: Fangs For the Help

_____________SARAH___________

Keeping to the shadows of the outer archive wall wasn’t optional— the Guardian had made it pretty clear that leading ‘members of the flock’ back into Whitechapel would be considered kidnapping and treason by The Council, potentially punishable by staking. Because that wasn’t at all overkill. Could their stance on vamp-on-vamp violence be any more hypocritical? Nevertheless, she held one hand tight around the emergency stake in her jacket pocket as she crept unseen through the replacement Council building.

At least she was acting in self-defence (as usual). Sarah resented the fact that she’d gone through so much to dismantle Jesse’s empire, only to be stuck with an equally insufferable fang squad, who posed an equal threat to her freedom on a daily basis. Plus, they _never_ listened to what she or the guys had to say— to the extent that she’d briefly considered attacking the Guardian, on the grounds that any form of vampiric cooperation (besides Erica’s and Rory’s) had to be a trap.

In fact, it had been such a refreshing change of pace to meet another vampire capable of common sense, it occurred to Sarah that maybe most vampires were like her, and she was just stuck with the melodramatic, power-hungry freaks. Whitechapel: home of the supernatural freaks and geeks… It made sense. And so, for once, did her task at hand.

To her surprise, the Archive was actually relatively easy to navigate with instruction, and it wasn’t long before she reached the sturdy wooden door that stood as the final obstacle between her and her friends. Applying gentle pressure revealed that it was locked— not exactly ideal. Still, undeterred, Sarah prepared herself for entry. All it needed was a _little_ push.

First, however, she put her ear to the door. Accidentally staking Rory or Erica with door splinters wasn’t the sort of daring rescue attempt she was going for— better safe than sorry. Besides, she had to make sure this was the right place; getting arrested for a crime she didn’t even get to commit would be totally lame. So, keeping one eye out for any potential Council vamps watching her from the stacks, she turned most of her attention to noises of the room beyond.

The first thing she noticed could only be described as a sound of tourture. Sarah found herself clutching her ears in agony despite her vampire hearing, instantly finding sympathy for whatever poor soul was making the noise— and furthermore for anyone unfortunate enough to be hearing it. The noise was completely unpleasant in both pitch and volume, with a somehow raspy quality, sort of how she imagined it would sound to strangle a cat… After it had been waterboarded with extra-strength mouthwash and had its insides ripped out.

When she removed a finger from her ear, she was amazed it didn’t show signs of bleeding. She dreaded to think what kind of punishment was being inflicted on her friends— no doubt on the single charge of fraternising with so-called ‘vampire hunters’. If Ethan and Benny were threats to The Council then, honestly, Sarah wasn’t sure how they got away with the phrase ‘immortal and all-powerful’— living in fear of a couple of nerdy sophomores was even less cool than Dirk Baddison’s post-Dusk career. She smiled to herself; Erica would have given her a slap for saying that.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the door, Erica was very much considering slapping someone. Sarah didn’t have to worry about the fate of her friends, or the origin of the anguished noises, when she heard her BFF threaten, from the other side of the door, “Rory, I _swear,_ if you keep butchering _Single Tear_ like that, I am gonna break out of here, and RIP OFF YOUR FACE!” Council or not, they were definitely being tortured— they’d been put in a room together.

Taking the opportunity presented by the precious lull in Rory’s… _unique_ serenade, Sarah whispered through the keyhole, “Psst— Erica, Rory— you guys all good in there?”

She had to roll her eyes at the response, “Wow! Did that door just talk? It sounded like Sarah!”

“It _is_ Sarah, moron.”

Well, Erica clearly shared her frustration. “I’m here to get you out,” she informed them, “Nerd squad’s working on a way to get Stern.”

She pulled her hand back and gave the door-handle one final assessment: some kind of leafy Art Nouveau, probably silver, and definitely antique. A shame to break. “I can handle this,” she quipped under her breath, as she tore the decorative piece from its frame in a single, high-speed, fluid motion, allowing the door to swing open. Sarah winced at the burns on her hand; she’d been right about the silver.

There’d be time for her to feel concerned by that later though— she wasted no time in rushing into the room, crying out Erica’s name as she did so. “I’m so glad you’re okay!”

“The feeling’s mutual,” the imprisored vampire disclosed, “When Rory and I saw that explosion, we thought you were dead.” She sounded more sombre than Sarah was used to, and it reminded her of just how much was on the line this time. They really were counting on Ethan.

Typically, Rory lightened the mood. “Erica thought you were dead— I knew for a _fact_ there was no way _Vice-Principal Stern_ could take on Ethan and Benny.” He may have been crazy— even for a vampire _and_ a geek— but Sarah thought there was something to be said for that loyalty.

“We’re fine,” she told them, “but Stern’s the real deal— even Jesse couldn’t—“

“You were with _Jesse?”_

It occured to Sarah that she and Erica would be having a long conversation when all of this was over. For now though, she dismissed the accusation in her friend’s eyes with a wave of her hand. “Ethan called him.” Her words sounded much more defensive than she’d intended them to.

All of it was besides the point, anyway; tortured or not, Erica and Rory were definitely being held captive. The two vampires were shackled at the wrists with silver chains bolted far above their heads, around a pipe that ran along the ceiling. Breaking the chains with brute strength would only tip the pipe, and whatever it contained, onto them. Sarah guessed it wasn’t going to be anything vampire-friendly. So… Daring rescue idea number one was out.

What would Ethan and Benny do?

Sarah asked herself the question as she analysed the room closely. It was small and sparsely decorated, almost like an office space, with a single desk and chair at one end of the room— each in a dark wood which matched that of the bookshelves in the Archive’s main chamber. A similar wood also panelled the bottom of the walls, concealing the finish of the antiquated crimson and black baroque wallpaper. Plenty of stake materials if anyone tried to stop her, but nothing to deal with the current dilemma.

Erica and Rory were standing facing the desk, in a similar set-up to The Council chamber, looking at her deliberation with a complete lack of amusement.

_Think,_ Sarah!

Maybe there would be a key inside the desk? She sped over to investigate. The drawer on the inside was filled with yellowing papers, wax candles, empty glass phials, inkwells, quills… was that a lock of hair?

“And what exactly do you think you’re doing in here?”

Sarah hissed on instinct; she knew that voice. Standing in the doorway between the makeshift prison and the Archive was one of the banes of her existence— evil in a tutu, or ‘Little Miss Fang-Fang’ as Benny quite accurately referred to her as— Anastasia of the Vampire Council. Sarah wondered if she’d be equally surly if she was forced to spend eternity looking like one of Jane’s least-favourite dolls. And being under five foot.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” she asked, exasperated. She’d been caught in the act and, honestly, had no problems with this kind of confrontation. “I’m saving my friends.”

This statement, infuriatingly, made the fiendish Pageant Girl smile with her signature crocodile-tears innocence. “From who, Sarah? They chose to come with me.” The little she-devil strode further into the room.

“Yeah— after you hypnotised us!” Erica tossed her hair, having none of it.

Rory, too, sounded scandalised, shouting “You made me look like a lousy guard!”

Sarah didn’t have any context, but dismissed it as a ‘weird Rory thing’ nonetheless. These were her weirdos, and she was leaving with them. Period. “My friends,” she asserted, slapping the drawer closed, “Aren’t cowards like The Council.” Anastasia’s lips were a thin line. “They wouldn’t just stand by to let some bitter, old dude take over Whitechapel— even if they knew there was a risk.” She drew the stake from her pocket. “And I’m not just standing by now.” She forced herself to stare straight into The Council leader, cementing her challenge. These were the stakes now.

Unsurprisingly, the Bloody Baroness wasn’t convinced. “It seems none of you are willing to outgrow your childish recklessness.” There was a delicious irony to hearing the words from such a babyish mouth, but Sarah forbade herself to laugh; too much was dependent on her actions. She stood firm.

“And why should we?” She challenged. The Bitey Baby Princess didn’t have an anwer. “This is _my_ life, and that means _I_ get to choose when to stand up for what I believe in.” Sarah Fox would never resign herself to being a passenger: damsels in distress could stay in _Dusk._ She took a confident stride towards Anastasia. “I believe in my friends.”

She could feel Erica’s eyes on her as her best friend took her stance,”And we believe in her.”

“And Ethan and Benny!” Rory added, nodding.

For the first time, the small vampire’s eyes flicked between the trio with something other than contempt. Evaluation?

When her gaze finally landed on Sarah, she spoke— her tone steady and unreadable. “I didn’t expect you to survive the blast from the Lucifractor.” An uneasy pause filled the room. “… Perhaps I was a little _hasty_ to dismiss you and your friends as insignifficant high-schoolers.” Well, it was probably the closest she’d get to a formal apology. “I trust you’ve taken care of that loathsome Vice-School Master?”

Ah. Sarah tightened her lips. “We’re… Working on it.”

“Working on it?!” the Pint-Sized Tyrant roared, all yellow eyes and flashing fangs. “Let me get this straight: you thought you’d just walk in here, and drag members of this covern into a war-zone with you?”

Firstly, that was entirely unfair. Sarah had one-hundered percent expected to encounter obstacles of some kind. Also, The Council wasn’t a ‘war-zone’, and—

Before she had the chance to string her outraged internal monologue into sentences, Erica stepped in. “At least she’s doing something,” she retorted, “which is more than can be said about any of you.” The snide blonde gave a condescending laugh; Sarah’s internal response was much the same. “Some Council you lot turned out to be— fleeing when Vice-Pricipal _Dusk_ Hater shows up with a magic marble— _so_ lame. I thought we were supposed to be the cool ones?”

“Yeah!” Rory chipped in, “And— and when Ethan and Benny save us with an awesome plan, then— then won’t you look _stupid!”_ He punctuated it with an exaggerated _hrmph._ For him, Sarah was pretty sure that constituted fighting talk.

For what Sarah was sure must have been at least a minute, they stood in a silent standoff. Anastasia still appeared to be sizing them up, but neither Sarah not her captive friends backed down. They had each other’s strength. The Sugar-Coated Demoness coughed unnecessarily. “Sunrise,” she declared, “You have until sunrise to admit your mission is pointless and return.” With that, she turned and headed back into the archive, stopping in the doorway to turn back and lock eyes with Sarah one last time. “Return here after then, and I won’t be so forgiving of your treason.” A flick of her wrist, and the manacles around Rory and Erica came unfastened, whilst the handleless door slammed dramatically behind her.

The first thing Sarah did was give Erica a hug. _I’m so glad you’re okay._ She didn’t say it aloud, but she didn’t have to— Sarah knew her relief was evident. It was actually Erica who ended up whispering it to her. “When I saw that explosion, I…”

“Erica, I’m fine,” she laughed, her relief still overflowing her emotions, “What matters now is making sure that we all stay that way.” They’d come so far. “The guys are working on a plan but, whatever they come up with, Stern’s the real deal— he almost killed Jesse!”

“Good riddance,” Erica jibed. _Someone_ evidently didn’t take too well to being somebody else’s pawn. They could discuss the car crash that was Sarah’s ex later.

“— All I’m saying is that Stern’s the real deal and,” she took a shaky breath, “It means a lot that you guys wanted to be there with us.”

Rory was positively beaming. “As if I’d miss a chance to fight an actual teacher!” Sarah didn’t know what to make of that, so she turned to Erica instead, puzzled.

Turns out Rory wasn’t the only one smiling; Erica was wearing a sly grin of her own. “Believe me Sarah, it wasn’t all for you.” Sarah smiled at her nonetheless as her friend unsheathed her fangs. “Now let’s go take a bite out of that _Dusk_ -hating son of a—“

The phrase was cut short by Sarah’s ringtone.

“Hold that thought,” she instructed, as she swiped the device from her pocket, checking the callerID that flashed across the screen. “That’s Ethan now— maybe they’ve got something.”

“That was pretty quick.”

She barely heard Rory’s comment as she answered the call. “Ethan, I was just about to head over to you guys right now— I’m with Erica and Rory, and don’t worry; they’re safe.” When she looked up, Erica was batting a characteristically overenthusiastic Rory from her hair. “Or, well, safe for now— I can fend off The Council, but I’m not too sure if I can stop them from killing each other.”

Strangely, Ethan was all business, sombre words crackling through the speakers. “Sarah, listen— don’t come back yet. There’s something called _The End of Nights;_ it’s mentioned in a prophecy book that Jesse used to have.” Something in the way he said it made it sound absolutely critical.

“You want us to take it from the Archive?”

No hesitation, “Bingo.”

Sarah wasn’t sure she even wanted to know what was in the book— Ethan’s tone had managed to make an already ominous sounding tome appear even more daunting. “Alright, _End of Nights—_ got it,” she confirmed. Then, after a brief pause, “Take care of yourself.” She wasn’t quite sure what made her add it; she wasn’t quite sure why she was so worried about him all the time these days. However, she was quite sure that the butterflies dancing in her stomach when she saw him safe made her feel alive again.

He made her feel alive again.

“Looks like that’s what I get for hanging out with a bunch of nerds,” Erica remarked, dragging Sarah from her thoughts, “An evening searching the library.”

“The library?” Rory sounded confused, looking to Sarah and Erica for some sort of validation. The poor guy probably didn’t know what the Archive was used for. “I thought Ethan wanted to hear my metal lyrics collection.”

“Your what?” Neither of the girls could piece together whatever it was he was on about. Sarah didn’t like to gawk, but she was fairly certain her mouth was agape in typical Rory-induced confusion.

Rory just grinned, evidently proud of something, “My metal lyrics collection!”

If the pause he’d left was for them to register their recognition, he needn’t have bothered.

“I told them about it _aaaaages_ ago— they told me to look at Jesse’s books and—“

“Rory, you’ve seen the prophecy?!” This had to be their first lucky break all day. Sarah thanked the universe for the glimmer of hope.

_“Seen it?”_ The boy scoffed _, “_ I _own_ it!” He was practically glowing with pride. “When The Council kicked Jesse out, they put _me_ in charge of cleaning out all his stuff.” Leave it to The Council to delegate a lame job. “They said I had to hand back anything important— but that meant I got to keep all the sweet hardcore goth verses!” Both Sarah and Erica stared at him, lost for words.

Snapping back into action, Sarah reminded herself to _never_ be surprised by the extent of Rory’s obliviousness. “Rory,” she started, attempting to quell the outward signs of her frustration. She didn’t know why she bothered— probably only as a courtesy— he had the insight of toddler. “We _need_ to look at that book.” Seeing his perplexion, a surge of exasperation ran though her. Her arms shot forward as if to point out the obvious, “Ethan thinks it could be the key to defeating Stern!”

“Alright!” Rory was nodding to himself, “We make him realise that vampires aren’t all evil by showing him the emotional power of our music.” Sarah and Erica shared a look, a single eyerow raised each. It was a wonder Erica hadn’t throttled him to death by now. Still, there was a task at hand, and neither girl had the patience to correct him in the moment. Waggling his eyebrows suggestively (Sarah really hoped she’d misread that), Rory turned to the two seniors. _“Ladies?”_

Gross.

Erica slapped him, eliciting an exaggerated “Ow!” from the younger vamp. Sarah scoffed.

“Just take us to your stupid book already,” Erica ordered, running her tongue over her fangs “I’ve got an overdue assignment I need to sink my teeth into.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge thanks to everyone who's engaged with this so far— it's just really nice to see. As mentioned before, updates will be weekly until it's all done... Maybe (dare I say) sooner. 
> 
> If you like what you read, feel free to let me know— the same goes if you don't. ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ


	10. 9: Episode Over: There’s New Hope

_____________BENNY____________

Five minutes into dissociating from his extreme co-opperative research into effective means of reversing the polarity of a dark arcane power vacuum (shoulder-watching Ethan scream at the _‘Did you mean:_ Ways to reverse the effects of the _Light Refractor?’_ message on his laptop screen), Benny realised that today marked the second time he’d learnt that most of his life was, in fact, a lie. Come to think of it, since starting high school, he was two-for-two on making an annual groundbreaking discovery. It looked like Grandma’s crazy wrinkles really were hiding a bunch of stuff after all— first he was magic, and now he was part of some prophecy. Oh, _please_ let next year’s discovery be that all the girls at school were totally into him this whole time.

Hey— nothing was impossible!

And yet here he was, doing nothing to resist whatever destiny was supposedly written for him. Touché to himself, he guessed. Still, he wasn’t sure how else he could deal with the situation; there was only a certain level of detail in which he could describe ‘hypothetical’ scenarios to the Mathletes before they got curious as to why he needed their help, so Ethan trawling Whatapedia was basically all he had. That was, obviously, not including Jesse, who did nothing but lurk ominously beside him.

Personal boundaries had obviously been redefined recently.

Seriously though— him shouldering Ethan was different. For a start, they’d been best friends for over half of their lives. There was something about the arrogance of Jesse’s mannerisms, his entitled full-body lean over the arm of Benny’s chair, that the young wizard found particularly grating: real dorkwad behaviour.

Although, he supposed that reigning over a town for a century would do that to your ego. Not everyone could be as awesome and humble as he.

And not everyone could deal with their personal space being invaded as he. Standing from the chair, Benny gave Ethan a pat on the shoulder as he walked over to the kitchen counter. There was more than one way to try and take out magic stuff.

“Alright, spellbook— let’s see what you’ve got,” he muttered to the ‘magic stuff’ of his own, leafing through his bookmarked black magic tabs. If there was something about diverting the arcane energy channel anywhere, then it’d be in there. It had to be. After all, hadn’t Grandma been able to block Stephanie’s powers?

He regretted not asking more questions about how that worked.

Hindsight, however, wasn’t going to save anyone— not with how unpredictable time-travel spells were. Burying himself inside the pages was his best bet.

And yet that seemed to be getting him nowhere. As he thumbed through page after page of frivolous parlour-magic marked ‘IMPORTANT KNOWLEDGE OF BAD THINGS’, Benny mentally cursed how whack his indexing was. ‘Conjure cutlery’, ‘speak with squirrels’, ‘body swap’, ‘enchanted rumour’— oh, _come on!_ ‘transform taste-buds?’ When, exactly, had he been expecting he would need to fight someone who was using—

“It can’t be!” the jerkpire cried out, no doubt sharing one of Ethan’s discoveries.

…Except Ethan wasn’t reading out a page of notes to him right now.

When the thick silence that followed the comment finally led Benny to lift his gaze from his pages, he was confronted with Jesse staring intently at the front cover in his hands. Again, with the personal boundaries! There was a pretty compelling urge to say it aloud, but he resisted, instead making a noise of confusion. Why respond to every random comment with a well-composed question, when you could just raise the pitch of your voice and let ‘eh’ do the trick?

Jesse’s condescending look suggested that the reason may have been dignity. “That book you’re holding is _The Magus Chronicle,”_ the vampire explained to him, in a way which actually made sense of nothing. Benny’s gawking response was deliberate; so, too, was Jesse’s eye-roll, befrore he clarified, “The Arcane Order’s original Book of Shadows.” The guy even smirked as he said it.

Ethan, on the other hand, didn’t even look away from his screen to remind him that, “Well, if we didn’t know your family was at the heart of this already, we certainly do now.” That they did.

Benny let out an awkward snort of laughter, which was really more of a harsh exhale through his nose. What it _wasn’t,_ was an invitation for Jesse to start talking again.

“All this time,” he laughed, “You nerds have been just _sitting_ on an ancient legacy.”

There was no need for the amused disbelief; it had worked pretty well so far— not that he ever got recognition for it. Not that he was even really looking for it— it was just that, in many ways, Benny resented the fact that no one could acknowledge what he’d been through with the whole magic thing. Accepting that his shortcomings were due to a lack of practice (and dismissing his surpressed power entirely) had been fine when there was no alternative explaination, but knowing that Grandma could’ve stepped in at any point when Sarah told him he couldn’t cast a spell to remember his own name, or when Rory told him that he was even worse at magic than the infamous blond was at being a vampire, or when Ethan failed to hide the slight disappointment at the latest failed attempt…

He wasn’t the only one who’d been lied to, and maybe it was making him testy— just a little testy, maybe. Maybe he was slightly testy at the minute anyway. Maybe it was the inherited evil, or whatever dark magic simmered in his blood, close to the skin, that was driving his attitude— or maybe he was always like it and just now admitting it. Maybe it was always there and he’d just stopped fighting it. Fundamentally, there was no insight to be gained by asking himself what was causing his reactionary attitude. Not that realising it would stop him.

Stress? Was he stressed? He had every right to be. After all, every sign seemed to be pointing to him being on the frontlines of the end of the world.

And yet Ethan was still here: focused, on-task, coping, with a plan, by his side. Well, _literally,_ he was in front and slightly to the right— but that was nonetheless with him _._ In spite of it all, Ethan was on his side for this— not to say (obviously) that Ethan could be described as anything less than the most loyal friend you’d ever make. It was just that standing beside each other in the face of danger was one thing, and practically a regular occurence by now, but throwing your lot in with the guy who may or may not have been destined to become a central figure in the apocalypse was another. He’d understand why you might not want the risk. What was it Jesse had called him earlier?

‘An _acceptable loss:’_ it pretty much summed him up at the minute. As much as he didn’t want to think about it, his untimely end sounded like it could pretty much end their problems. His problems, at least, would definitely be over. _Eeesh,_ the thought was morbid. Still, it made him grin into another page of magic that had nothing to do with reversing the effects of the Lucifractor.

“I’ve not been sitting on anything,” he asserted, pointedly shifting his gaze down to where his feet were on the ground, before raising an eyebrow at Jesse in challenge, and gesturing to himself in exasperation. “This isn’t _my_ legacy!”

The vampire smirked in sick amusement. “Because that old sack of bones didn’t trust you enough with it?”

That was it.

Had Benny been thinking with his inner Ethan (or, you know, _common sense,_ as most people called it), he would’ve probably realised that the question was intended to provoke him in some way, and risen above the bait. Conversely, had he analysed the situation in his more typical manner, he’d’ve gleamed the same knowledge, and chosen to make a cutting riposte anyway.

As it was, he gave the situation no thought altogether, answering instead to the sparks that shot up and down his neck. “Don’t you talk about my Grandma like that,” he ordered, the world turning purple for the briefest of seconds. He wasn’t smiling and, now, neither was Jesse, the centuries old vampire tyrant somehow caught in his thrall— so vulnerable and helpless, so at his mercy…

Benny throttled the rest of the thought from his mind with such determination that he ended up physically shaking his head before he cleared his throat and continued, “Look, okay, I don’t know why Ethan called you.” Not strictly true. “I mean, I know _why_ he called you,” he mumbled, “With all your fancy vampire Jedi-mind powers, and your stupid…” Closing his eyes and taking a breath, Benny steadied his thoughts. Ethan was still absorbed in his one-sided cage mach against the Google search bar— the last thing Benny wanted was to thank him by picking fights with one of their few allies in the situation.

“Anyway!” Benny picked up, “The point here is that I personally don’t see any reason why I should trust you— so, I’m warning you,” he smirked, “Yeah, _I’m_ warning _you,_ you big _Dusk…_ glitter boy…” Jesse’s mouth was a thin line, “—toy… zombie…” Lines had never looked so disappointed, “— evil… guy?” And now the line was back to being amused. Quit while you’re behind, Benny.

Doing just that, he finished the point, “You so much as point a fang in Ethan’s direction again, and I’ll give you something worse than exile,” standing strong to strengthen the words’ impact. Clearly he hadn’t lost all his mojo— he was pretty proud of the way he’d stood his ground.

Ethan, unfortunately, didn’t feel the same way. “Benny!” he chided, turning round in his chair to shift his focus to the boy, then the vampire, and back again in a rolling fashion— obviously with some sort of intent.

A hint, maybe? What? He conveyed with a shrug, to Ethan’s lack of amusement (and surprise).

“He’s just being a protective friend,” the Seer laughed, a trace of completely unjustified embarrassment in his tone.

Not that Benny had the time to question it, as Jesse cut down the conversation with a brief, huffing guffaw of his obnoxious laughter— directed at him, no doubt. Jerk. “It’s alright,” the vampire assured Ethan, giving Benny the distinct impression of his grandma when ‘the adults are talking.’ “I’m actually impressed.” Jesse schmoozed— unsuccessfully. Whatever act this guy had going on was just laughable.

So he laughed: short, mocking, and accusatory.

“No, I’m serious— those are some big words for a little nerd. The last time we met, you…” The vampire chuckled, “Well, I’m sure you remember.” Yeah, he and Ethan both. The dude’s soul was nearly cursed with the crimson stain of the undying, and Benny still had nightmares about what would have been if Sarah hadn’t been there to save his friend that night. Though he doubted that this _particular_ event was on Jesse’s mind when he aimed the phrase at him. There was a certain event in a high school bathroom that Benny didn’t especially consider his proudest moment. Remembering it now only made him realise how much his attitude had changed going into sophomore year.

Not that the difference was as extreme as the shift into freshman year, of course— although the changes had more to do with his new ‘extra curriculars’ than growth and change to his character. Perhaps that was what set him on edge; Jesse being around was just another reminder of the kid who constantly needed saving.

As if reading his mind, Jesse voiced a variation on the thought, “I never expected that the pair of you could get this far.” Unfortunate common ground though it was, it beat sharing nothing. “I mean, two _mortals_ coming up against so many supernatural threats…” Well, when he put it like that— he and Ethan were pretty awesome. Okay, it was settled: he’d been too hard on Jesse— old gruges and all that. Anyone who knew how cool Team Mortal Geekitude (name pending) and their achievements really were had to be at least decent. “This must be pretty strange for you.”

Benny was the one laughing now. “Hey, if you think this is the first time that we’ve nearly lost a fight against something or someone with the potential to _totally_ wipe out half of Whitechapel, then you’ve got another thing—“

“I’m not talking about your miraculous little eleventh-hour victories,” he paused. Okay, now Benny was intrigued. “I’m talking about what a weird change it must be for the guys who waste their timepreventing the end of the world to be the ones causing it.” Benny froze. “I mean, come on! All this time you were fighting your own destiny—your own _grandfather._ And they wouldn’t even tell you.

“Just… _wow!_ Now, I know I’ve been called cruel, but that kind of psychological—“

Worse than the words was the sympathetic look Ethan had been giving Benny the whole time. Salt in the wound was meant to disinfect, but damn if it didn’t burn. Besides, he didn’t need the pity. After all, “I don’t have any emotional connection to Stern.” It was said to his best friend as much as it was to their antagonising ally.

However, where his words prompted the former to give a him a weak smile and return to his research, the latter picked at the wound. With a knife. “Of course not— they made sure of it.”

It was getting harder and harder to keep a lid on his anger. “Grandma only kept the truth to protect me from it,” Benny hissed through gritted teeth. He knew it was the truth. Growing up, she’d filled in for both the mother he’d never known and the father who never cared, and she’d done a better job than Benny dared to thank her for. She would never let him hear the end of it. And yet the truth remained: he loved her more than anyone else on this giant, spinning space-rockthey called a planet, and no one got to imply that she was anything less than an angel. That was his job.

“Are you sure?” Jesse looked as if he was doing a double-take. “Because from where I’m standing, on the night of the Harvest, _she,”_ Jesse gestured noncommittally at the defenceless old woman on the sofa, “—sent her own flesh and blood to the frontines, expecting him to face off against my entire flock without even knowing how to cast a single spell.” There was still laughter in his tone, despite none of his words being funny. “If I were you, I’d be asking whose side I’m on.”

Frustratingly enough, it didn’t take Jesse to be in his position for Benny to have doubt in his grandmother’s motives. Like maggots, the worry writhed beneath his skin, chewing through the emotional foundations he’d always relied on. He wanted to trust her, in spite of what the voice in his head was saying, but it was getting harder and harder to ignore that little voice. Fortuitously, it was cut off by a different one.

“Stop!” That voice was Ethan’s. “Look, Benny’s not about to end the world or anything, and there’s no way he’d turn against anyone he cares about. He’s my friend.” And Ethan was his. Benny was touched, not to mention relieved, by the intervention: a reminder that he would never be alone, regardless of the situation. Contemplating a world where there was no Ethan to help fix his mistakes was equivalent to picturing a premature shallow grave for himself. Even after saving everyone with and advanced umbral resistant abjuration field and pulling off successive group transportation, like a badass, he had to admit he couldn’t do all this without him.

Not that he’d ever say it out loud; that dude had an _ego_ sometimes!

And on the topic of ego, Jesse looked like he was about to speak again, hands raised in mock surrender. _Oh, joy!_ “Hey, it’s okay,” the vampire pretended to concede. Was it, Jesse? Is that what it was? “Really, I get it.” Seeing how the words were directed at him, Benny took the executive decision to kill whatever expression was currently on his face. “This isn’t the sort of thing you want to hear, I can understand.”

Oh, he _understood,_ did he?

No, he really didn’t. “I… just… what—“ Benny stammered, struggling to find a coherent way of expressing his sentiments without stooping to Rory’s signature ‘bite me.’ You never wanna be on Rory’s level. “—What are you trying to do here? You— You lost your flock, got sent into exile; forced Sarah into being a vampire— and she _still_ wouldn’t go with you. How is messing with _my_ life meant to fix yours. Or, well, un-life, or… You know. Whatever.”

If Ethan was half as astounded with his words as he looked, then this was a new record. Congratulations, Benny— we’re totally dead. Actually taking in, rather than just looking at Jesse proved he, too, had been phased by the comments— hurt even, maybe— probably by the Sarah thing especially.

Yeah, he’d gone too far. Whoops? Should he be apologising, or just… Well.

Not wanting to say anything to make it better for fear of making it worse, Benny tucked his nose back into his book, stealing an occasional glance at the other guys through the suddenly thick air of the room. Ethan, at least, was back to trawling Professor Google’s sacred archives. Jesse, in stark contrast, hadn’t moved an inch, maintaining his obtrusive position between where Ethan was sat, and where Benny leant against the kitchen counter. Although something about it was different— the aloof posturing that had previously radiated a classic jock-adjacent ‘too-cool-for-school’ now felt diminished, as if Benny was just now able to see past some kind of façade he didn’t know was there.

Ethan was right about monsters and cool kids: they both came down to the same thing, and were invariably disappointing.

Excluding Sarah and Erica, obviously, on the grounds that they were both still just as cool now he’d gotten to know them as they were when they were nothing more than unfathomable projections of charm and confidence. That, and the fact that they were total badass senior babes. Ethan’s babysitter and, more recently, girlfriend had saved their necks (quite literally at times) again and again— plus, they’d worn her down with all their references. One did not simply ‘put up with’ movie night, then snort with laughter chatting about it the next week. No, Benny, unlike Ethan, wasn’t fooled by the act. Ironically, it was the ‘Seer’ (as always) who was blind to the mysterious ways of the fairer sex— the guy spent so long getting hung up on how he should act around her that he hadn’t noticed the way she acted around him in their unguarded moments. Slowly, they were whittling down that girl’s defences to reach the dorky princess Ethan deserved.

And then, Erica— _well,_ whether she admitted it or not, she was still as much of a total nerd as she had been before she ascended as cruel Mistress of the Night. Ever since Sarah had gone AWOL, dear Lady Distain had spent more and more time with Ethan, Rory and him, making the occasional slip in her persona that evoked memories of freshman Benny’s vision of a blonde Princess Leia. Yeah, that ice queen was cold, but the Three Amigos were on fire. Or a house on fire— it probably depended on the day whether they thawed her out with an alternative kind of charm or a horrifying dose of apocalyptic perspective.

Either way, his point was that the girls held their own just as well against jocks as they did with nerds, as they did against monsters. Ethan was right about something else: Jesse didn’t deserve either of them.

In fact, if Benny was being honest, Jesse probably deserved to get obliterated by the Lucifractor. It wasn’t a comfortable truth to consider, and yet he had to admit it: had he and Ethan been in Stern’s position little more than a year ago, they’d have done the same thing. Unquestionably. Because vampires were evil, weren’t they? They were the good guys.

It was that easy.

And it really was— he’d gone from your under-appreciated, above-average nerd to a vampire-hunting, spell-casting rockstar. It was basically the most awesome thing that could happen to a guy! Benny knew that there wasn’t a geek in the world who didn’t dream of getting a chance to be the hero they role-played as, and he and Ethan were the two that _did._

The hard part was looking back with over a year’s hindsight, after the initial buzz of awe and wonder had worn off, and asking whether they were ever the heroes at all.

Sometimes they were— he’d give them that. They’d saved lives! That _had_ to count on some sort of cosmic scale, right?

Who was he kidding?

If there was a god up there keeping score, there wouldn’t be a need to fix the books. Repressing it changed nothing; Rory’s soul was condemned thanks to his hesitation, Sarah’s final chance at a normal life was crushed by his incompetence, and now everyone would probably die because of him. When he cast a spell, it was either evil or useless. When he did anything _whatsoever,_ it was either dangerous or pointless. So what if Jesse didn’t deserve Sarah and Erica? He wasn’t better. He didn’t deserve Ethan.

Ethan had always been the Jedi; that was his path. Benny had just never considered that he walked it without him before.

Flicking past yet another Latin inscription of arcane torture methods, such thoughts refused to leave his mind, clinging onto every insecurity he’d ever pushed down. It’d be comical otherwise, but he’d reached a point where even the smallest fears (were little big toes a symptom of evil?) morphed into evidence of the dreaded inevitable. Forces beyond his comprehension had seemingly set his future in carbonite and laid it on display to mock his efforts.

He turned the page quickly.

And a miracle happened. “Guys, I think I’ve found something,” Ethan gasped through his breathless enthusiasm. Benny felt the same way.

“Me too!” He cried out, allowing a spark of hope to ignite within him. When Ethan didn’t proceed, he realised he was grinning like a lunatic. Dulling the look to a grin, he added, “You go first.”

Ethan nodded, accepting his invitation. “It says here that, according to versions of the Arthurian legend, there are types of magic that require the user to have some sort of demonic heritage.”

“Great,” Benny remarked dryly, “So, I’m related to the world’s worst teacher and _actual_ Satan. How does that help?” It was putting a dampener on his positivity.

Ethan sighed, dismissing the comment with an eye roll. “No, it doesn’t— I don’t know.” There it was: doubt. “But Stern can’t just use the power harvested by the Lucifractor directly without any negative effects— he said it himself.” Okay, point. Ethan took a deep, shaky breath, “If I’m reading this right then, without the orb, he must be channeling vampiric energy through himself to bolster his powers.” Benny gave him a look to show that he’d completely lost him. “Using it means he’s somehow shifting the balance between being mortal, and infernal!” Ah. Was it too hard to have started there? “We know it gives him the vampires’ strength, but what if it also gives him their weakness?”

Even Jesse perked up at this, leaning towards the screen for a better look. “How do we use that against him?”

“Simple,” Ethan was obviously loving this. “We fight him exactly like we’d fight a vampire— holy water, UV lightabers, garlic bombs… any of it should work. Then,” he paused, making sure to turn and catch Benny’s eye, “He’ll have no choice but to surrender the Lucifractor’s energy.” Genius, as always. Benny berated himself for his earlier lack of faith; the boys were _back,_ and they were on fire. Metaphorically (for now).

Except, Jesse didn’t look too amused. “Great— so he can just brainwash _you_ back into Sorcerer’s Apprentice and let the rest of us perish as prophecy dictates,” the vampire sneered, pointing at Benny with his accusation. As if.

This particular wizard was totally done with being fate’s servant. The universe was just gonna have to answer to him and Ethan this time. “Not this time,” he declared, voicing the end of the thought aloud as he displayed his double-page spread with a lopsided smirk. _“A Spell of Binding:_ we can basically suspend his powers. _”_

He wasn’t sure what was more gratifying: Ethan’s excitement, or Jesse’s astonishment.

“Then what are we waiting for?” The former asked rhetorically, closing the lid of Benny’s laptop and standing from his chair in one fluid motion. “It’s time we take this VP to school.”

Now _that_ was a classic line. Benny nodded in approval, half his face still beaming mischievously. He let it. After all, this was what they did: they cracked jokes only they would laugh at, made their own dorky references, and saved the world only after they’d nearly ended it.

Maybe, he thought as he headed for the drawer where he kept his UV sunsaber XL, it didn’t matter if he was a born hero— Ethan had enough hero for the two of them, that was for sure, and besides— doing the right thing didn’t always mean doing the ‘goody-goody’ thing. Using spells for frivolous stuff, hiding from the monsters, stacking his cookies into a sandwich, flirting with every pretty girl, refusing to wear an outfit that didn’t incorporate a stripe… All the little things that Benny did were a part of who he was. Ethan and Sarah could call any of them dumb, or cowardly, or whatever they were, but the point was that they were all _human._ A Seer, a vampire, and a Spellmaster were bonded by their humanity.

Someday, when he was super-famous for something cool, he’d pitch it as a TV show.

Because the world didn’t end today, or tomorrow, or the day after, or, indeed, any day this year. Or the next year, as the Mayans predicted. He’d had a tip off for that one. To hell with the prophecy, and to hell with scores— life was pass/fail, and you only failed when you got too scared to keep living it. No one was losing their life over some overbaked fortune cookie nonsense. The words in that book were only good for making sure that his family’s apparent diabolical legacy stayed buried.

Repeating those truths as a mantra, he raised his modified lightsaber aloft, mimicking the movie poster. He could forge his own destiny.


	11. 10: It’s Not a Phase— It’s the End of the World

_____________SARAH___________

It was safe to say that Rory’s room didn’t look anything like how Sarah would have imagined it. Not that she ever _had_ tried to imagine it— she just supposed that it’d be more overtly nerdy. Ridiculous as it was, she’d always made the assumption that Rory constructed his personal space exactly as Ethan and Benny did theirs: shades of space-age green and blue, stacks of geek memorabilia, and a litany of artefacts from hobbies they’d had in a past life, before their spare time was eaten up by the local monsters. Sarah often wondered if there was a time when, between finishing his homework and playing Heckbot games, Ethan used to actually play the guitar gathering dust in his room. She also wondered if the floor of Benny’s room would’ve been visible before being strewn with all the crazed foreign scrawls that she guessed were spells.

Even her own room had a wall plastered with cheesy prints of a dorky Erica and her growing up— either Rory didn’t share the same sentimentality, or his mom organised this place.

Taking in the neutral beige walls, well-pressed white bed linen and polished oak furniture, it wasn’t hard to guess which. His mom totally organised the place. In fact, Erica looked just as surprised as she did at the sight— no doubt expecting toys to be strewn about, rather than tidied away into one of the lacquered storage chests. There was no way that Rory was mature enough to clean up after himself.

The way he was rifling through the drawers of his bedside cabinet confirmed it; in seconds, there were sheets of paper, rocks, elastic bands, and all sorts of junk (was that a bloody bandage?) covering the floor. “It’s in here somewhere…” he muttered, more to himself than to her and Erica, but Sarah heard nonetheless. So, too, had Erica, and they shared a knowing yet incredulous look.

“Then can you make it out here a little faster,” Erica taunted, flicking over some sort of cryptid plushie that was carefully poised on the bed. Didn’t Rory say his mom didn’t know he was a vampire? That woman was in for a pretty nasty shock someday.

Without turning to face the girls, Rory shot back, “I’m trying— it’s been almost a year since I got it,” in his defence. “I’m more into the emo sorta genre at the minute, so this metal stuff just isn’t personal enough to launch my album.”

“Your album?” Sarah had no idea how Rory got through life— his spectacles weren’t ‘rose-tinted,’ they were practically opaque.

Oblivious, as usual, to her tone, Rory turned round at her question, beaming away. “Yeah— It’s time that MC Monstabat came out of retirement to mix for _The Bleeding Heart Kid.”_

Now _that_ would be something. After hearing his drone back at the Archive, she had to give it to him— he was redefining the idea of ‘tortured’ music. Just maybe not in the way he expected. _“Bleeding heart kid?”_ she asked Erica under her breath, curious as to what insanity her best friend had be forced to endure.

“And if he keeps calling himself that, he’s gonna have to start meaning it literally.” Sarah snorted at the comment. Meanwhile, fangs out, Erica closed in on Rory, pushing him aside. “Not got all day, dork.” Aside from a weak verbal protest, he offered no resistance.

Seconds later, when Erica had turned the drawers inside-out with an FBI grade search at vampiric speed, Sarah found herself face to face with a familiar item. She could feel the eyes of the other two staring through her expectantly, probably waiting for some sort of assurance. After all, the annoying voice in her head reminded her— she’d known Jesse the best.

And she recognised this book: the object of his obsession. Running a shaking finger down the delicately embossed leather, she tried desperately to supress the memories that came flooding back— memories of being lured into a life she’d been too entranced by to actually notice; memories of fearing the person she was supposed to love; memories of a time when the only foreseeable future she had was a pitifully short existence spent running from her ex boyfriend. And, at the heart of it all, this.

She had, of course, never been allowed to see the inside— it was beyond the priviledges of the _lowly fledgeling_ she had been regarded as at the time— but Jesse’s obsession with prophecy had given her many glimpses of his most prised possesion: a compendium of sacred vampiric writings that supposedly told the future. Some job it did last time. Yet somehow, once again, there was prophecy-crazed villain disguising themselves at Whitechapel High. A different face, a different prophecy and a different threat changed nothing; it was still the geeks and the girls VS the odds. Only this time, they had experience.

“This is definitely it,” she confirmed, weakly nodding at Erica, who seemed intrigued by the weathered tome.

Sarah allowed her to open it, and leaf through the once tirelessly guarded contents as though they were only recipies in a cookbook. Many events had been and passed anyway. Besides, neither of them were inclined to pay reverance to the so-called _‘un-holy vampiric legacy.’_ Newsflash: it was history, and it was boring.

“How do we even know what we’re looking for?” Erica inquired, sounding frustrated. The book had been left open on a page of swirling cursive that appeared to depict the events of some long-past war. Were those people using swords and armour? Suddenly, Sarah was slightly curious as to how and when vampires could see what future had been ordained.

Taking the book from Erica’s grasp, Sarah flicked to the back of the book. “Ethan said it was called the _End of Nights.”_ She had a theory. Thumbing past passages with reference to the _‘Claiming of Whitechapel,’_ and lingering briefly on the _‘Black Army’s Rebirth,’_ Sarah turned to the place she expected to have all the answers: the last page of the book.

Being right about something didn’t always feel good. Written on the page in front of her, in a crimson liquid that definitely wasn’t ink, was the same message, etched over and over into the inside of the back cover:

_When bloodlines align and lies are revealed,_

_Night joins the day, no more concealed._

_At Judgement, virtue does not save_

_The children of the cradle-grave._

She read it aloud, trying not to let any concern seep into her voice. Because that didn’t sound creepy at all.

“Maybe I was wrong,” Rory wondered aloud, “those lyrics _are_ awesome!”

Unbelievable. Sarah decided to give up on trying to explain anything to him, seeing how obvious it was that none of them had the time. Forget that; she didn’t have the energy. Every second counted, and if something bad happened to the guys on her watch, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to forgive herself. “We need to get this to Ethan— now,” she ordered, anxious of how long they’d wasted already. Finding the words was only the start— they still needed to interpret them.

Some of it, at least, seemed relatively straightforward. The spooky _‘children of the cradle-grave’_ line sounded like it was referring to the undead so, as the final apocalyptic prophecy in a book on vampires, it was a pretty safe bet to say that vampires were what it was on about. But the rest—what bloodline? Stern’s? _Jesse’s?_ Then there was the whole thing about day, and night, and Judgement— with a capital ‘J.’

If anyone had the answers, it’d be Ethan.

Her boyfriend, she thought experimentally. The way the word resonated in her subconscious felt unfamiliar, but not unpleasant as such. After all, she was still counting this as their second date. If they managed to actually take down Stern, she was probably going to have to accept it as some sort of divine encouragement for their relationship.

One thing was for sure; their third date was having a strict ‘no magic’ policy— and that definitely included Benny. Also uninvited were Erica, Rory, the Vamp Council, and any other friends or monsters likely to steer things off course. Although, at this point, was an evening without a supernatural occurrence even an evening? Facing monsters was pretty much part of who she was now— and the same was definitely true of Ethan, who’d always been the one to drag her into the paranormal dramas.

Okay, maybe _she’d_ dragged _him_ into it first with the whole being-a-vampire thing, but he and Benny had since done a pretty good job at making up for it.

Still, there was comfort in knowing that, this time, no one had dragged anyone else into anything. Sometimes bad guys just showed up— after all, this was _Whitechapel_ she was on about— and it ended up being her responsibility as the group ‘tank’ (high damage dealer, who can take a lot of hits, as Ethan explained) to take care of them. Not that she minded: cleaning up after Ethan and Benny’s messes was always somehow infinitely worse. Probably because they should’ve known better.

Or, Benny should’ve known better and Ethan _should_ have been supervising him. Maybe they both needed a babysitter. Laughing internally at the thought, Sarah sped after Erica through Rory’s open window, but not before dropping Ethan a quick ‘be right there’ text. With vampire speed, that kind of message honestly had a whole new meaning; they could be at Benny’s place with the prophecy in seconds.

She just hoped it was enough.


	12. 11: End of Knights

_____________ETHAN___________

It couldn’t have been soon enough when Sarah showed up at the front door with Rory and Erica in tow. Not that he’d been waiting on the porch just to be the one who greeted her. Not that he admitted it to Benny when the guy raised a knowing eyebrow at him on his suggestion to wait outside for her. Vampires had to be invited in— it made perfect sense.

Although, truth be told, he’d been more than a little anxious about the three vamps and, given the Vampire Council’s ‘glowing’ track record, he was pretty sure the concern was justified. That and the fact that Stern was essentially still on the loose. They’d barely escaped and yet remained, for now, unscathed. He couldn’t see Stern’s logic behind letting them regroup.

Maybe he was waiting for them to make the next move… But what would that give him?

Well, it’d give _them_ some time. He knew that Benny would say he was overthinking it. More time was good! The only problem was that he didn't understand it, and not understanding his enemy made him feel like he was playing checkers against someone playing laser chess— which really sucked, because he was _good_ at laser chess. And, because Ethan was used to being on the back-foot, reacting rather than acting out; it got a pretty bad rep, but he’d take being the underdog over making the decisive moves any day. That was how heroes worked, damnit! Besides, being underestimated allowed them to play to their team strengths: his quick thinking under pressure, Sarah’s unanticipated strength, and Benny’s knack for attempting things out of his league. Usually, it was _them_ researching their opponents’ strengths and weaknesses.

“Sarah, you’re back!” He exclaimed in the most obvious, unromantic way. Like an idiot. He heard Erica mumble something along the lines of ‘and what are we?’ but didn’t waste time engaging with her. That was definitely bait. Eyes still on Sarah, he asked, “You got the book?”

She held it aloft in response. Or, at least, he hoped it was the right book— briefly imagining if they’d just found a diary or something. It’d be funny if there weren’t lives on the line.

“—I’ll take that as a yes.”

Vampires invited in, he led them through the house to the kitchen, where Jesse was kicking back against a wall, and Benny was carrying out the next phase of their plan. Well… Trying to. Ethan informed him that whatever was on the stove had started boiling over, smiling at his friend’s manic dash from the pantry.

“Is Benny making pasta?” Rory asked, in a way which was distinctly _Rory._ The question was met with five variants of the same incredulous expression Ethan had spent years perfecting. Benny still probably had the edge on the condescending aspects of it. How did he pull his eyebrows in different directions like that?

Ethan supposed it didn’t matter; Rory still wasn’t taking the hint. “He’s working on the plan.”

Sarah seemed interested. “The plan?”

His plan— not to brag. He and Benny were pretty pleased with it though, and Jesse even afforded them a ‘that could work,’ which far surpassed any other suggestions they’d had. Although, that sounded like less of a big deal when he reminded himself that he was competing with suggestions like Benny’s ‘what if we fake our own deaths?’

“Ethan had an idea,” Benny explained and, having gotten his brew under control, walked round the kitchen island to give the aforementioned idea-maker an excited nudge. “I was able to add a little magic.” Ethan rolled his eyes at the little eyebrow wriggle that went with the statement. “I’m gonna get up close and bind his powers!”

Erica, however, looked less amused, and more than a little confused. “So what’s the stupid book for?”

“We’re not a hundred percent sure yet,” Ethan confessed. They’d have to guard or get rid of it for good to stop more lunatics from cropping up, but then what? Destroy something necessary to the prophecy? Unwrite it? He floundered for the words.

“But— it’s critical to Phase Two,” Benny offered in support.

It was enough to encourage Ethan to go on. “Defeating Stern is Phase One: basically our top priority.” He hadn’t asked for it, but Sarah’s nod in response gave him the validation he needed. “Phase Two is about making sure he can’t try again.” Looking deep into Sarah’s wide brown eyes, he added, “To do that, we need to find out how to screw up that prophecy.” He wasn’t going to let anything happen to her.

Their silent moment didn’t last long, however, before Benny made a remark. “Good thing, my friends, that this is not our first destiny-defying rodeo.” Ethan heard, rather than saw, the smile in the sorcerer’s voice. He was right— they’d done this before.

Finally breaking his eye-contact, Sarah looked down at the book. His gaze soon followed. She wasted no time in flipping to the final page, which, before anyone could stop him, Benny leaned in and read out in his best gravelly video game protagonist voice:

_“When bloodlines align and lies are revealed,_

_Night joins the day, no more concealed._

_At Judgement, virtue does not save_

_The children of the cradle-grave._

_“Well.” Well,_ indeed. “Any ideas, E?”

Not any particularly pleasant ones. Ethan was suddenly aware that eveyone in the room had eyes on him, no doubt expecting him to have figured out all the answers to their problem already. Like it was that easy. Somehow, being the genius with the awesome plans never got him as much praise as it did responsibility. Still, it could be worse. Nothing sounded especially complicated— just the usual apocalypse stuff. “I think it’s talking about some kind of Judgement Day for vampires,” he started tentatively, looking to see if Jesse could confirm or deny anything. Unsurprisingly, his sculpted features gave nothing away.

Unlike Rory, who looked normal— which, for him, meant confused. “What’s that— like a graduation?”

“Try the end of the world,” Ethan responded. It sounded blunter than he liked to be but, to hit Rory with an uncomfortable truth, sometimes phasers had to be set _way_ past ‘stun.’ Either way, it shut the guy up. Satisfied with that result, he turned his attention back to Sarah. “The bit about the cradle-grave sounds pretty obvious— I’d say it’s on about the undead. Hence, Judgement day for vampires specifically.”

Sarah nodded, “I figured.”

“Then, the bloodlines and lies is on clearly on about—“

He stopped mid-sentence, now also very aware of a truth that was not yet common knowledge in the room. They still didn’t know, and it wasn’t his truth to tell. Shirking the questioning looks of the three newcomers, Ethan turned to Benny for some kind of signal. Typically, the dude looked as if he had no idea what Ethan was waiting for.

A saga of awkward eye-gesturing later, and Sarah had had enough waiting. “What?”

Ethan sighed, shifting his lowered gaze to her as she spoke. It was a _Catch 22:_ telling Sarah without Benny’s say-so was a betrayal against him, and yet not telling felt like a betrayal against her. One of these days, someone else could weigh in with an answer. He couldn’t lie on the spot like this— not to Sarah. He couldn’t lie on the spot anyway! Maybe the right thing to do was to just leave it.

“You think it relates to Stern?” Sarah guessed, inviting Jesse to huff in amusement.

Ethan’s eyes were still on Benny as he responded, “Not… _directly,”_ catching the almost wistful look in his friend’s eyes. It felt like a satisfactory response: not too revealing, and yet he hadn’t lied. He gave Benny a supportive tap on the shoulder.

Or, at least, that had been his intention. Benny seemed to interpret it as some sort of tag-in (like in the wrestling games), and broadened his shoulders after the touch, extending his limbs to their actual size. It was the assertive sort of posturing that Ethan didn’t see from him very often— the kind that superheroes pulled before they beat impossible odds.

“He thinks it’s on about me,” Benny stated with a slight nod, as if he was finally conceding the truth. “Turns out magic’s kinda _really_ in the family. Like, all of it.” He paused, but not long enough for Ethan to interject. Not that he'd know what to say. "In our family." Three jaws dropped straight to the floor; the statement got just about the reaction Ethan had expected.

Erica was the first to recover, “So you’re telling me that an entire species of immortal, all-powerfulvampires has spent the last few centuries in fear of being wiped out by a dweeb who only wears nerd-stripes and gets pushed into lockers?”

“Hey!” Benny looked genuinely affronted as he popped the collar of his striped jacket, revealling more of the striped T-shirt underneath. She had a point about the guy’s wardrobe. “It’s usually Ethan who ends up in lockers.” And, just like that, he'd been singled out as the prime nerd again. Firstly, he didn’t appreciate that tone and, secondly, there was no need to point fingers literally— it was bad enough emotionally. Just because he wasn’t wrong didn’t mean he had the right.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to shut him down, as Erica beat him to it. With a flick of her wrist, Benny’s protests were dismissed, “I don’t care.” That’d teach him to call out Ethan like that again. “All that matters is that vampires were cool, then they were all stuffy and boring, _then_ they were total wimps— and _now_ they can’t even fend off Captain Kirk over here!”

“Alright, I’m the Captain,” Benny muttered to Ethan with an eyebrow wiggle and a nudge. Well, someone looked pleased with themselves.

Someone who just threw Ethan’s ego under the bus. “More like Commander Taggert,” he retaliated. Two could play at this game. Besides, come to think of it, their actual lives— with all the vampire drama and a highschool backdrop (not to mention his pining after Sarah)— basically were to _Dusk_ what _Galaxy Quest_ was to _Star Trek._ Ethan didn’t have to like his life occasionally feeling like a weird parody to acknowledge it. Although, his justification was irrational either way—he’d hit Benny with the unflattering comparison simply because there was no better place to hit the guy than his ego. Knowing the enemy was key to effective banter, and Ethan smiled proudly, knowing the fact.

Benny mock glowered at him.

“You guys— this is serious!” Sarah chided, and Ethan instantly kicked himself for letting his focus wander. “If this ‘Judgement Day’ thing has something to do with Benny, then there’s gotta be some kind of way for us to stop it.”

Ethan had hoped the same thing. Before he could formulate a response, however, Rory piped up with, “Maybe he can rig the results so we all get 'A's!” Hopefully he was only joking. Even then: now _really_ wasn’t the time. They needed actual solutions!

In fact, Ethan wasn’t the only one bemused by the lack of ideas represented by Rory’s comment, as Jesse began to speak up— clearly fed up with hearing inexperienced children (relative to his age) speculate the meaning behind things he probably knew about already. _“The End of Nights_ is just another name for our Judgement Day,” he explained, “It appears in all vampiric scripture.” Ethan caught the disapproving looks given to Sarah and Erica for not making the connection or, more likely, for having never read any vampire texts (besides the _Dusk_ fanfiction they sent to each other on their cellphones, of course). “In the stories, the legendary _Knights of Lumen_ open the gateway between the mortal world and the shadow world— the world from which our undying energy originates.” Reassuringly, Ethan saw he wasn’t the only one who had needed the description.

“It’s an ethereal realm of insatiable hunger,” the vampire continued, “and on Earth, it would be able to claim every soul tainted by darkness. Hence, without their soul’s inner light…”

“Vampires would just be absorbed by it.” Ethan grimaced when Jesse gave him a look which said his theory was obvious. They didn’t stand a chance against an entire realm.

But that didn’t mean they had to give up. “What about the other lines then?” Benny inquired, and Ethan admired the faith he had in him to find a solution. _“Nights of Lumen,_ unconcealed... then what?”

Sarah looked mildly confused, offering her correction, “The prophecy says _night joins the day.”_

It was met with an eye-roll by Benny,“Alright, alright: daytime, light... whatever— it's the same thing, Sarah— it’s Latin.”

“Okay, no— I’m pretty sure that the Jesse was talking about a group of people. As in 'knights,' with a ‘k’— whereas this is talking about—“

That was it. Ethan lurched forwards with his discovery, mentally inking in the last details of his final plan. “Sarah, Benny— that’s it!” He watched as they gave a questioning look to each other, and then to him. “It’s some kind of play on words.” No one seemed to be with him just yet. He sighed in frustration as he continued, “Day and night are dualities and, in a mythological context, are often used to represent good and evil.”

“Like light magic and dark magic,” Benny shot in, reassuring Ethan with his spaced-out 'gears-are-turning' look.

At least he must have been making some kind of sense. “Exactly like that.” Now, time for the big theory, “What if the _Knights of Lumen_ in the legend aren’t actually some group of magic soldiers, but the unity of their magic itself— the darkness in the light, and the light in the darkness.” Unable to tell if everyone’s faces were blank from puzzlement or shock, he added, emphatically, _“Balance.”_

A wise woman had said that it was what magic was about.

“And the magic of every bloodline in the Order, joined at the will of a single being, would provide the ultimate dyad in moral arcanum,” Jesse mused aloud, moving his attention from Ethan to Benny as he did so.

Benny— from the looks of his scrunched-up forehead, at least— wasn’t enjoying the attention. “So there’s gonna be a tear into this ‘Shadow Realm’ just by me existing?” he asked, alternately looking to Ethan and Jesse for answers, “Cause I’m still too young to die.”

“B, no one’s gonna die,” Ethan assured him, giving a warning look at what seemed to be Jesse’s _‘we’ll see’_ face. When he returned his gaze to his friend, the scared wizard avoided his eyes. He probably needed some time. Meanwhile, Ethan accepted Sarah’s sympathetic smile. They could still help each other find a way out of this.

_Virtue does not save the chidren of the cradle-grave._ What did that mean? He understood that the vampires’ curse blocked the soul’s inner light, but his instincts kept telling him there was more to it than that. Why mention the negative? The Seer didn’t just get crazy hunches. Not unfounded ones. Could vampires be saved by their immorality? That’d still put them in just as much trouble when it came to the Shadow Realm although, even beyond his logical reasoning, the idea didn’t feel right. There had to be another way— another salvation— something else, maybe, or even someone else…

Erica snapped him from his thoughts. “Shame— I was hoping to introduce a certain Vice-Principal to one of my,” she unsheathed her fangs, “— vices.” Well, he supposed if she had to kill anyone…

No, no— bad thought. That right there was a slippery slope. “We’re not gonna try and hurt anyone,” he asserted. If they chose not to listen, then fine; that was their choice. His conscience was clear.

“Agreed,” Sarah declared, taking her stance beside Ethan with a firm nod. “But we stil need to find a way of stopping the prophecy.”

It was his turn to agree with her this time… If only he actually had any ideas on how to do that. For now, he would just have to commit to thinking of something under pressure later. “We’ll have to worry about that after we’ve taken down Stern,” he suggested, “It’s going to be pretty much imposible to avoid something without more information on what it is we should be avoiding.” Fortunately, mostly everyone looked as if they agreed, with Rory nodding particularly enthusiastically.

“But what if his first move is to try and brainwash me again,” Benny pointed out, acting out brainwashing with his hands. “If he knows how to open the door to the Shadow Realm by now, then he won’t be sitting around waiting for us to hit him.” Ethan could understand the personal concern in his friend’s words and grim look.

He had a valid point.

“You should use your tinfoil hat to block out his brainwave interference!” Rory proposed with a beaming smile.

_He_ had a less valid point.

“There’s always something we can try,” Sarah reminded them all, before Benny could turn Rory into an inside-out frog with itchy feet. Although her words commanded everyone’s attention, it was Ethan she addressed them to, and he had a feeling he knew what she was about to say. Holding up the still-open prophecy book, she wrapped her delicate fingers around his wrist, searching his eyes for something. She’d have found awe, dwindling concern, and love: pure and simple. He swallowed the lump forming in his thoat and nodded.

Having received the confirmation she’d been waiting for, Sarah guided his hand in hers gently to where her other hand was gripping the book, rubbing calming circles on his wrist with her thumb as she did so. He wasn’t nervous about getting a vision— and he’d been just about to try and trigger one from the book anyway— but he lingered above the book for a moment anyway, just enjoying the contact. He didn’t want this to end.

Although, if they didn’t stop The End of Nights, he might never get to hold her hand again. It was with that thought that he pressed his palm flat against the book.

The rush of psychic energy flowed through him instantly, knocking the air from his lungs as his visions always did. Somehow, experience didn’t make the transition between the physical world and the spiritual one any easier. Either that or he was doing it wrong. Constantly entering visions in a state of shock _did_ feel like a flaw in his abilites, now that he thought of it— not that the feeling didn’t pass quickly enough. He was already over it.

As the shock dissipated, he was confronted with a familiar scene— a diamond inside a circle, surrounded by two off-kilter arcs, comprised entirely of sixteen glowing dots— the symbol of the Order. It had been in his vision before, the one from the ring… Except, this time, the dots became robed figures, positioned inside a stone circle that Ethan now recognised as being at the foot of the garden. They’d once discovered it to be the burial site of a curse-reversal cure, and it just now occured to Ethan that none of them had thought to ask any questions into the area’s significance as a result of the fact. He’d been a little preoccupied at the time, sure, but Benny could’ve done some digging.

Then again, maybe things had worked out for the best— given the circumstances, that was.

Ethan considered the alternative as the hooded strangers in his vision began their stange square dance, like that of the dots before, crossing and merging into a dark shape that somehow mirrored the brilliant light of before. _Night joins the day:_ it looked like his theory was correct.

And it didn’t look like good news. Beams of Lucifractor-purple energy emanating from the stones seemed to be feeding the mass of shadows in the centre, which in turn was creating every sci-fi nerd’s biggest fear: a giant, evil sky-beam. Ethan had seen enough movies to know that there would be monsters coming out of it at some point.

He didn’t have time, however, to reimagine the scene from a cinematic perspective as, in the next moment, it was already gone— replaced instead by a scene even worse. Highlighted in the sickening violet radiance was the image of Sarah, shouting something Ethan couldn’t make out, and holding onto someone he could, looking at him with poorly concealed admiration. It was more than just 'friendly' or 'grateful,' he was sure of it; he _knew_ Sarah. And as she clung to the shoulders of the man beside her as if he were the only one in the world for her, he almost could've said he'd seen the scene before… 

_…Except it wasn’t supposed to be Jesse._

After everything that had happened, it _couldn’t_ be, it… How could her heart, at the end, still scream for the monster who’d turned her? How could it, when she was so strong, and brave, and independent, and witty, and just _stunning_ all the time?

As the scene swirled back into reality, the shards of his heart were screaming too.

They shattered at the concern in present-Sarah’s wide eyes, staring deep into his. Her hand was still gently clasped around his wrist. He moved to hold it. What would Benny tell him? Visions could be misleading; these were the best years of his life; you have to live for the moment. Not for the first time, Ethan wished he could be that laid back.

“The stone circle,” he informed the group, broadening his focus from Sarah as he said it. “It’s where the gateway to the Shadow Realm is.”

Benny nodded, “Makes sense— a baharoth basically reflects and amplifies eldritch energy.” Good to know.

“Then that’s where Stern’ll be,” Sarah deduced.

Ethan watched Erica give her a wry smile, “So what are we waiting for? I’m getting hungry.” The comment went against his no-murder policy, and he made no effort to hide his displeasure. Was exposure to this kind of attitude what would lead Sarah back to Jesse?

Fortunately, Sarah didn’t sound too pleased either— not that Ethan could say the taller girl appeared to mind her objections. “Erica! We’re not gonna try to _drain him.”_

Rory looked genuinely put out. “Why not?”

“Because _we’re_ the good guys!” Could the vision have been wrong? Every word that left her mouth gave Ethan much-needed reassurance, and he was just about to let his mind fall into a relieved romantic daydream when she added, “Plus, he probably tastes old and gross.”

Suddenly, daydream Sarah wasn’t kissing him, but biting his neck. “We’re keeping Stern alive cause it’s the moral thing to do,” he asserted. “And besides,” Ethan looked at Benny with the faintest hint of pity, “He can’t face justice six feet underground.” The follow-up got him a weak, gratified smile.

“Right, because Justice is above ground!” What? Rory was, once again, on the receiving end of a room of baffled faces.

Although everyone probably wanted to punch the guy equally, it was Benny who cracked first. After a cartoonish sigh, he shot his hands out in exasperation and cried, “Justice still isn’t a place, Count Dorkula,” eyes wide and wild. Ethan had a hunch that they should’ve been more on topic.

“Doesn’t matter, guys,” he reasoned, acutely aware of the way Jesse had stood in cool silence for quite a while now. “We still need to go through the plan.”

Benny clicked his fingers, “Right— the plan!” And dashed over to the brew he’d left to simmer. Flexing the fingers of his open palm in the way that the Spellmaster often did when channeling his power, Ethan heard him utter the words _“Visio vertus!”_ When he actually turned to check, he could see the arcane sparkles (for lack of a better word) of the potion reflected in the wide green eyes of his friend’s manic grin.

Presumably, that meant it was ready.

“It’s a disguising potion that works sorta like the projection ring,” the wizard explained— again, using his hands as much as his words. “Stern can’t get us to take each other out if he doesn’t know who’s who.” Ethan was proud of the elegance of it— his original idea had been to blind Stern in some way, but a magical disguise would remove the intial challenge of doing so. This was why he and Benny were the dream team.

Ethan returned his friend’s proud smile, “Can’t get Benny and I to sink fangs into anyone; can’t get any of us,” he traced a circle in the air to include himself and the vampires, “To blast fireballs at anyone.” More signifficantly, Stern also couldn’t get the latter group to open any gateways; he didn’t have to say it to know it would be at the forefront of everyone’s minds (with the exception of Rory). They had it taken care of. Knowing this, Ethan accepted Benny’s raised hand in a high-five before turning to Jesse. Great as it was, Ethan could accept the plan had its flaws, and Sarah might say it was too risky. In which case, any back-up they could get would be important.

It was the only plan they had.

Unsurprisingly, Sarah’s eyes went to the senior vampire too. Ethan just hoped that it was reassurance she was looking for, and nothing more. Jesse sighed, “As much as I hate to admit it, your geeks have a pretty good plan.” Sarah’s ‘geeks’ were standing right here. Turning to Benny vindicated his attitude, reavealling a face that said ’get a load of this guy.’

“So, what?” Erica asked, “We’re gonna let Dorkasaurus _Freaky Friday_ us?” Ethan caught Rory and, more surprisingly, Sarah snort with him at the unflattering nickname given to Benny, which the man himself was less amused by.

By that guy’s standards, this probably counted as victimising by now. “It’s just an illusion, Bitey,” the wizard shot back, pouring the glistening liquid into six distinct phials.

“No one’s actually swapping bodies,” Ethan cleared up, “We’ll just look like we have.”

Benny was already back to grinning like a madman, giving Ethan a pretty good idea of what came next. “Once I get one last ingredient from everybody.” With that, Ethan grimaced at the sight of his friend piercing the skin of his own thumb in one swift movement, letting out a surpressed ‘ow’ as he did so. Ethan wasn’t looking forward to his own turn.

He gave a very obviously fake smile to his friend as the needle was wiped down and handed to him, a drop of blood now in one of the phials. “Here goes nothing,” he remarked through nervous laughter. Why were there always needles? Nevertheless, he held onto his nurse’s training, and managed to prick his middle finger without passing out. Now _that_ could’ve been embarrassing. He shuddered, wiping down and passing the needle to Sarah.

She looked from him to Benny, failing to hide the uncertainty behind her hesitance. “You guys are sure this’ll work?” They exchanged smiles that couldn’t quite be called reassuring. Sarah didn’t look surprised. “What the hell,” she shrugged, drawing another drop of blood. The wound healed instantly, but Ethan still had to force himself not to squirm at the sight. “It’s not like we have any better ideas.”

Exactly— otherwise there would be far less needle-pricking. Erica was holding it now, and Ethan had finally decided he could no longer watch. Distracting himself from the minor mutilations occuring around him, he turned his mind to the next step in Phase One of the plan: assuming identities.

Keeping his eyes fixed on the various glass jars lining the walls (and not the bloody needle that he was _not_ thinking about), he elaborated on how the concoctions worked, “Whoever drinks the potion with your blood in it will look like you for as long as the effects last.” He winced at Rory’s pained yelp, instinctively going to look at the source of the noise, and having to divert his attention somewhere else as quickly as possible.

Erica was looking at the phial in her hand as if it were a vegan protein shake. “And how long exactly is that?” When no one answered her, she moved her hands to her hips. “What? It’s not like any of you are _this_ hot.” The little one-handed hair toss helped make the comment unnecessarily brutal, Ethan thought. Brutal, but accurate.

“Harsh,” Benny replied, mussing his hair. Ethan had to roll his eyes. He clearly wasn’t the only one with the hots for a vampire… Although, he _was_ the only one of them actually dating the vampire he had a crush on.

And that particular vampire wasn’t laughing at Erica’s little dig on their looks. Nerds: one, cool kids: zero. “Erica’s got a point though,” she told the group, in an unexpected points equaliser. “How long do we get?” Panic over; KO to Team Nerd.

“And who do we get to swap with?” Rory asked, staring a little too eagrely at Erica. Ethan was pleased to note that Sarah and Benny looked equally disturbed as he felt, while Erica made a point of looking away.

“We’ve thought about that,” Ethan revealed, handing his phial to Jesse, who in turn gave his to Benny. Those who hadn’t been privy to the plan were looking understandably confused. It was time for the mortals to bring them up to speed. “Stern knows that it’s up to Benny to open the door to the Shadow Realm,“ he began, catching the eye of the aforementioned sorcerer.

“—And, after the grand reveal of what happened to old Warlock Grandpa, we know he’ll most want to go after Jesse.” Benny finished.

Ethan nodded, “Except he’ll spend his whole time avoiding him, because he’ll look like me.”

“But won’t that mean Benny will just get attacked instead?” Erica asked, surprising them all with what sounded like genuine concern. They must have let it show, too, because she added “And then we’ll have no way of binding Stern’s powers.” Ethan wasn’t convinced.

Benny, however, seemed to be, offering the kind of fake smile that said ‘thanks a lot’ in the language of sarcasm. “It won’t work on me, neck-muncher.” Erica hissed at the comment, and the wizard instantly lost the confidence he’d found in making the remark.

Whatever weird banter the two always had going on was getting them nowhere. Ethan sighed to himself. “The power that Stern was using against Sarah and Jesse was the Lucifractor’s; it drains vampires of their life-sustaining shadow energy, and adds it to the orb— only now it adds onto his powers.”

“Except, I don’t have shadow energy.” Benny smirked as he announced the fact, but turned serious as he launched into an explanation, the gestures of his hands revealing the effort he’d put into compiling it in a way that made sense. “Stern was able to absorb all that power from the Lucifractor into himself, but it’s still not part of his innate spellcasting ability— he has to channel it.” Ethan heard him exhale audibly through his nose, an indication that he was nervous about the plan. He continued nonetheless, “Therefore, if he uses it on a non-vamp, he just exposes the connection— basically letting us just siphon it off.”

“Alright, _now_ you guys have lost me,” Sarah laughed, looking to Ethan to clear things up.

Maybe he could explain it in terms of science. “Think of it like a short circuit,” he offered, to encouraging nods. “The power normally flows all the way towards its target and back unless there’s a shorter route. If the channel’s open when the energy-hunting beam is on Benny…”

“He gets control of the power,” Sarah completed. Ethan smiled.

Benny cracked his knuckles, “The more ‘draining’ energy he hits me with, the more firepower I get.” The wizard, too, had a cheshire grin.

“But surely you’d just reach an equilibrium?” Erica queried, catching Ethan off-guard. It was easy to forget that she used to be just as geeky as they were— or maybe he was just repressing the memories of Benny telling him all about her, right after he’d exposed the fact that he had a babysitter to the whole cafeteria, _on their first day of high school._

Either way, it created enough of a brain-stall for Benny to answer that, “That’s where these bad boys come in,” gesturing to the sunsabers laid out on the table. The girls still looked confused.

Ethan sighed, “Long story.” They could get an email link to the Whatapedia page later if it was really important. “Gaining strength from vampires doesn’t come without their weaknesses, and we didn’t want to go for anything lethal.”

“Okay, this could work,” Erica offered, “On one condition.” They all waited for her to name it, Sarah looking increasingly frustrated, and Benny’s eyebrows comically raised. Ethan just wanted to be done with it. “Rory is _not_ getting this body.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello to anyone reading this, and the humblest of apologies— I've been incredibly distracted. Basically just a heads up that plot-wise, I (believe it or not) have, in fact, drafted this story up until the very end! ...Provided I don't find any glaring last-minute plot holes.
> 
> I can't make any promises on when I'll get to future updates... but I can say that I intend to make them. Have a wonderful day, and— once again— dreadfully sorry.


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